The relationship between Rio Tinto and China requires an entire branch of Sinology to itself.

If last summer's detention of Stern Hu, Rio's chief iron ore negotiator, seemed to have put bilateral ties between the Anglo-Australian miner and the people's republic into the chiller, his reported admission that he took bribes should on any normal analysis freeze them solid.

And yet Rio and Chinalco have just confirmed plans for a partnership to develop iron ore deposits in Guinea. That is the sort of deal that seemed impossible last year when Rio shunned the state-owned aluminium producer's promise of a capital injection in favour of a rights issue. Rarely can a guest speaker have uttered the cliché “Today, I want to look to the future” with more feeling than Rio's boss Tom Albanese in his speech to the China Development Forum yesterday.