David Cameron’s visit to China is rather different to some of his recent trips. Firstly, as Douglas Murray outlined yesterday, he’s not making as big a noise about human rights as he did when he was in Sri Lanka recently (and in Sri Lanka, it wasn’t just noise: it was the body language, with an awkward handshake summing up how he felt about Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa). Secondly, he’s not going to bother getting all Love, Actually about the country he represents. When he was in St Petersburg, the Prime Minister got rather overexcited about a comment from a Putin official about Britain being a ‘small island no-one listens to’. His wife Samantha now jokes that the Prime Minister in Richard Curtis’ film is also called David and that her David fancies imitating the fictional one. He had another opportunity today, with the publication of this leading article in the pro-government Global Times, which dismisses the UK using similar language:
‘The Cameron administration should acknowledge that the UK is not a big power in the eyes of the Chinese.
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