Just occurred to me that the man ultimately responsible for the violent oscillation on China by the Tories may be...David Miliband.

let me explain. While Foreign Secretary in 2008, Miliband acknowledged full Chinese sovereignty over Tibet because, well, just because Beijing asked him to.

The exiled Tibetan government's negotiating position with China was based on the idea that China had suzerainity over Tibet, not full sovereignty. A slender reed, but that's what there was, and Miliband just undercut it apparently without thinking about it.

Robbie Barnett wrote about it and why it mattered at the time https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/opinion/25barnett.html

not a big story, but it did cause quite a bit of harrumphing in Tory circles at the time. See, for instance https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6958001/How-David-Miliband-betrayed-Tibet.html

...and I wonder if this in turn influenced David Cameron's famous meeting with the Dalai Lama back in the days when his area strategy seemed to be 'bet on India, hedge on China'.

*walks dog round block* anyway, as i was saying: then China puts the UK in the 'deep freeze' (two-way trade and investment rose during this time), there's a handbrake turn, and suddenly we're in a golden age of Sino-British relations'. Aready busy here, Huawei piles in...

...until, now, as we see, it does not. I suspect the main driver of today's decision was US sanctions against Huawei, and i think the whole saga goes to show that we've been essentially rudderless for a long time before we cut loose our moorings with Brexit.