article: The words of British Chancellor George Osborne. With this week's UK state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping, the British government hopes to step over that golden threshold. President Xi will be accorded every honour, including a visit to the prime minister's country retreat at Chequers and an address to both Houses of Parliament. After the pomp and ceremony of a carriage on the Mall and a state banquet at Buckingham Palace, President Xi is expected to preside over the signing of some multi-billion pound business deals, including one to bring China into the heart of Britain's civil nuclear power programme. "Let us embrace the golden era," echoed the Chinese ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, in a news conference on the eve of the visit. Last year I said the UK had some catching up to do, but now the UK is catching up from behind. It is committed to being China's "best partner in the west", and in developing relations with China it is indeed becoming the leader in Europe. But as London prepares to welcome the Chinese president, the UK drive to become China's best western partner raises important questions about costs in other areas of British foreign policy and consequences for existing alliances. How China guards the Xi creation myth Nigel Inkster, former director of operations and intelligence for the Special Intelligence Service, MI6, voices concern over "a propensity on the part of some areas of the UK government to see China as little more than a giant hypermarket, to which we can export clones of Eton and Dulwich College and the kind of Burberry rainwear that few British nationals would ever wear. "But I think if that is really the way the relationship is perceived, it does not represent an adequate assessment of what it is we're dealing with." The momentum for a shift in the UK's China policy is coming very much from George Osborne, who also happens to be the bookies' favourite to succeed David Cameron as leader of the Conservative Party. Whitehall sources tell me the so-called "Osborne Doctrine" does amount to a strategic shift on China, one in which the prime minister has let the chancellor drive the agenda and where reluctant members of the cabinet are being "dragged along". The chancellor wants China to become the UK's second-largest trading partner by the end of the decade. He points out that while growth in China has slowed, it is still supplying about a quarter of global growth, enough to add an economy the size of the UK's over five years. Mr Osborne insists that this is a golden moment, where the interests of the UK and China align. China's maturing economy can absorb more of the services which are British export strengths. And UK infrastructure can soak up Chinese investment funds looking for a reliable return. Win-win for both sides, according to the chancellor. But not everyone is convinced. Jonathan Fenby is a former editor of the Observer who has written several books on China. "My unease about this policy is that in
summary: "Let's stick together and make a golden decade for both our countries."