David Cameron, the UK prime minister, is hoping that Beijing will make him look good during his visit this week by announcing that it has approved Diageo’s bid to take control of one of China’s best known spirits brands.
Diageo wants to buy a controlling stake in Shui Jing Fang, one the Middle Kingdom’s most famous brands of that most Chinese of drinks, baijiu, or literally white alcohol. Beijing is trying to figure out whether it can bear to see something so Chinese, become so British.
But at the same time that Diageo is trying to argue that nationality should not matter to baijiu, it is asserting a territorial claim to that most Scottish of drinks, Scotch whisky.