Ed Davey will today begin a 10-day visit to China to drum up inward investment in Britain’s next generation of power stations and offshore wind farms as London is officially taken out of the diplomatic “deep freeze”.

The energy secretary is the first British cabinet member to visit China for at least 18 months after Beijing cut contact with the UK last April following David Cameron’s decision to meet the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, in London in early 2012.

Mr Davey’s tour rubber stamps the rapprochement between the two countries in recent months, cemented at the G20 summit in St Petersburg this month when Xi Jinping, China’s president, invited the British prime minister to visit Beijing. Mr Cameron is due to lead a British trade delegation to China later this year – although the date has not yet been set.