The faded red banners welcoming the “Wirral council leaders” were propped against locked glass doors just inside the office of Sam Wa Resources Holdings on Tuesday in Jiangyin, a city on the banks of China’s Yangtze River.
This is the home of the company whose chairman, Stella Shiu, is supposed to be the driving force behind a large Chinese investment in Britain.
However, there was no indication of a thriving business in the small dusty office, let alone a large mining and trading conglomerate ready to invest millions of pounds to regenerate the Mersey riverside.
The Peel Group, a British developer that is proposing a £10bn project along the Mersey, signed a joint venture with Ms Shiu last year to attract tenants to the International Trade Centre, a £175m business development planned as part of the waterfront scheme.
This project is among a series of Chinese investments presented as proof that the British government’s business-oriented approach to diplomacy is paying off as David Cameron prepares to fly to Beijing this weekend.