David Cameron will brush off criticism of his government’s wooing of China when he welcomes Xi Jinping to Britain this week and announces plans for two Chinese groups to take a stake in the UK’s nuclear power industry.
A £24.5bn power station project, first announced in October 2013, is expected to attract investment from China’s CGN and CNCC, which will take a roughly 40 per cent stake in Hinkley Point C, a nuclear plant planned for south-west England. EDF, the French state-controlled utility, will be the lead investor.
Western diplomats in Beijing privately criticised Downing Street for “doing an Osborne”: a reference to the UK finance minister’s five-day warm-up tour of China last month when he said Britain should “run to China”.