David Cameron could scarcely have crouched any lower during this week’s visit to China. For his compatriots, the British prime minister’s enthusiastic self-abasement was, well, embarrassing. It did not change anything. Before Mr Cameron had boarded his flight home China’s state-controlled media was characterising Britain as an insignificant relic, of passing interest to tourists and students.

In so far as it might have served a broader purpose, the trip instead offered an excruciating example of the muddle of high-mindedness, mercantilism and subservience that often describes European responses to China’s rise. A continent mired in economic troubles is desperate to sell more to the world’s second-largest economy. But how to reconcile this with upholding a broader set of European values and interests?

Mr Cameron’s visit coincided with a dangerous escalation in tensions in the East China Sea following Beijing’s attempt to grab control of the air space above the Japanese-administered Senkaku Islands. Its recent declaration of an expansive air defence identification zone marks another turn in a ratchet designed to wrest the islands, which China calls the Diaoyu, from Tokyo’s control.