Tristram Hunt spoke about his book Ten Cities that made an Empire at the Yeovil Literary Festival this week.

Amongst the key cities of the British Empire featured in Hunt’s book are Hong Kong and Liverpool, two cities I have worked in, both linked in differing ways to China, the former returned to China after 150 years of British rule in 1997, the latter after years of sea trading with the Orient now has an apparent ambition to be the Shanghai of the Western World based on significant Chinese investment.

As a resident of West Somerset where our ‘Kow Tow-ing’ politicians appear to have ceded a part of the Hinkley Point landscape to the Chinese, and the happenings in the South China Sea where the Chinese are building artificial islands to claim extended territorial waters, one wonders if we are witnessing the birth of the International Chinese Empire.

Still we can be pleased to learn that after the recent meeting of the Chinese Communist elite we will be allowed ‘Two’ rather than ‘One’ power station.