DAVID Cameron, the UK prime minister, who hosts Chinese President Xi Jinping in Britain this week, has become the Cinderella of Beijing's up-and-down relationships with the West. Very much out of favour in 2012 over his courtship of the Dalai Lama - the Tibetan spiritual leader habitually on a collision course with Beijing - Mr Cameron has now moved up comprehensively in the friendship stakes, all part of a determined UK government bid to woo Chinese trade and investment.

In a Chinese TV interview at the end of last week, he attempted to deflect complaints that Britain is kowtowing to China. "We see no conflict with having that very special relationship, with wanting to be a strong partner for China as the Chinese economy continues to grow and China emerges as an enormous world power."

Yet the British approach continues to attract criticism from other countries, not least from the US, where a senior official said in March that Britain's alacrity in declaring its participation in the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank was a sign of its "constant accommodation" of the Chinese leadership.