This is more a vague summary of bits of British and Chinese history over the last couple of hundred years than a look at the relations between the two countries. There's no focus to it, no thesis being examined, no argument being made, just "this happened, then this happened" for a couple of hundred pages. I spotted one glaring error - Chris Patten wasn't appointed Governor of Hong Kong by Thatcher in 1992, because she'd been out of power since 1990 - and some of the statistics he quotes about China's growth are suspect and appear to contradict each other. There are interesting books to be written - or have already been written - about a lot of the subjects here, this fails to be interesting about any of them.