Uncritical welcome: The pursuit of closer ties to China should not come at the expense of concerns about its human rights record

China's President Xi Jinping inspects honour guards during a welcoming ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. (Reuters)

Lord Palmerston once said that Britain has no friends, only interests. David Cameron’s Government seems to operate on the same principle, or lack of one. That would explain the extraordinarily lavish and almost obsequious character of the welcome laid on this week for President Xi Jinping of China – a rising force in the world but not a democracy or a friend to the values that underpin our own society.

Awkward questions about Tibet, Hong Kong and human rights in China proper, it seems safe to predict, will not be allowed to spoil three days of toasts, carriage rides and banqueting. Treats include a stay-over for the President and his wife in the “Belgian suite” of Buckingham Palace, a state dinner hosted by the Queen, a dinner with the Prime Minister at Chequers, an address to Parliament, and meetings with selected scientists and stars.

Clearly, Britain is determined to do what it takes to become “China’s strongest supporter in the West”, to quote the Chinese ambassador to London, Liu Xiaoming. As a strategy, that is defensible in purely economic terms. Beijing is dangling the promise of investing more than £100bn in the UK in the next 10 years. As the economies of our European trading partners continue to stagnate, it makes sense to try to attract as much capital as possible from growing economies in Asia and elsewhere. This is already happening in fact. Chinese tourists may prefer Paris to London but for Chinese businessmen it has long been the other way around. China invested more in the UK over the past five years than in France, Germany and Italy combined.

During the’s visit, as a taste of things to come, we should expect an announcement of Chinese backing for the new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset. No one disputes the need to attract business from China. But it is embarrassing when this hunger for Chinese capital starts to look desperate, and when it makes our leaders willing to forgo even the most cautious discussion of China’s mixed human rights record. Only the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, appears ready to strike a discordant note, having promised to raise his concerns with the President at a brief one-to-one meeting before tomorrow’s white-tie banquet. Mr Xi may dismiss Mr Corbyn as a figure of no consequence. But it is cheering that at least one senior British politician is ready to convey the message that not everyone endorses the argument that trade is all that matters and that our values are relative, depending on the amount of cash on the table.

China is in no sense the world’s most egregious violator of human rights. It is a more open and freer society than it was 20 or 30 years ago and Britain’s leaders will always argue that engagement is the way to make an improving situation better. However, there is a difference between engagement and the kind of forelock-tugging flattery that Mr Cameron and George Osborne seem bent on dishing out. This is the problem with the policy towards China – and not only towards that state: our friendship with Saudi Arabia is another case in point. It is not just the depressing signal it sends to human rights campaigners in those countries but the message it sends to the world.

Britain’s critics may say it has always been selective in its criticisms and only ever targeted the rights records of countries of no economic or strategic importance. The way our leaders are courting China is in danger of turning what was a suspicion into an undeniable fact.