And so the two countries are looking for larger-scale interactions. Now that Britain is looking to improve her diversity of energy sources, China was always likely to become a key partner. The first new British nuclear power project for some time, Hinkley Point, just east of London, is now to receive large-scale Chinese assistance, with a ￡2 billion guarantee from the British government for the Chinese input to the project, thus underpinning Britain's attractiveness to Chinese investment. The company conducting the Hinkley Point project is actually French, but this emphasizes the international nature of cooperation in this vitally important field.

As well as visiting the established economic centers in Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu, Osborne also paid tribute to China's "Belt and Road" initiative when visiting Xinjiang, a key juncture in the program of raising the quality and content of trade links between China and Europe. There has always been British interest in the far-western regions of China, largely connected with oil exploration; the programs currently under development promise to open a far wider range of potential areas for cooperation.

All this, of course, is meant to prepare the way for the forthcoming state visit of President Xi Jinping. In Britain, a state visit must be more than a visual spectacular; it is vital to engage the attention of the populace by emphasizing the solid benefits which come from the cultivation of high-level relationships. The hope is that the agreements made during Osborne's visit will be merely a prelude to the unveiling of even greater tangible successes during President Xi's visit.

In one sense, we in Britain know that our state visit will be somewhat overshadowed by the President's immediately preceding visit to the U.S. However, we know that while in some ways we cannot compete with the U.S. we have other things to offer, and Chinese foreign policy has always involved maintaining a broad network of friends and partners. It is to be hoped that Mr Osborne's visit to China has underlined the point that Britain has a lot to offer, not only in the cultural and historical sense, but also in the field of cooperation at the highest technological level, not to mention the enormous part we can play in helping to ease China's full transition into the world's financial systems.

We await the state visit with great enthusiasm, and hope to see the best of China fully engaged with the best of Britain.

The writer is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://www.ccgp-fushun.com/opinion/timcollard.htm

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