Top tips for UK-China trade: grab the cheque and sup with a long spoon

There are reasons why Theresa May might harbour doubts about the Hinkley Point nuclear project — chiefly its unproven French technology and the high probability of time and cost overruns — but the fear expressed by her aide Nick Timothy that ‘the Chinese could use their role to build weaknesses into computer systems which will allow them to shut down Britain’s energy production at will’ sounds — even to a Sino-cynic like me — far-fetched. As I wrote here during President Xi Jinping’s visit last year, ‘The least sinister thing about the Chinese is their money. A ten-digit cheque… even from China National Nuclear Corporation… does not carry a ‘backdoor’ listening device.’

That said, we should stop kidding ourselves about the growing warmth of our economic relations with China, which was one of George Osborne’s propaganda themes. And we should ignore the Xinhua state news agency’s warning that the new Prime Minister’s apparent ‘suspicion towards Chinese investment’ threatens ‘the arrival of the China-UK golden era’.