Can Cameron bring home the bacon from China?

It is rather telling that the biggest deal announced by Vince Cable in China so far has been the export of live breeding pigs, to a country already home to half the world’s pigs.

It is a totemic deal in many ways. The British pigs will be flown to China and sire 6,000 high quality pigs each, infusing China’s pig gene pool with some high quality bacon. Yes it is worth about £9m a year, but that’s not even a scratching on a £17bn current account deficit (though larger deals involving Rolls Royce will be announced today).

Getting pigs to fly is, though, one of the easier challenges facing Britain’s trade mission to China. The party has arrived in China on the second of David Cameron’s blockbusting trade missions. The Prime minister, Chancellor and Foreign Secretary will be holding out the hand of friendship and the begging bowl of growth and jobs.

It was precisely the same in India in August, with the PM displaying a remarkable energy, and utterly unashamed commerciality in promoting and name-checking UK businesses to Indian executives. The gameplan in India and in China is to sell luxury British goods, services, and banking etc to the growing middle classes of the “BRICs” (Brazil, Russia, India and China).

The vision: servicing the mass consumer culture and affluence emerging in parts of Asia. Great Britain becomes Great BRIC-tan. Get Ms Wu and Mr Reddy to be sporting Burberry and British bank credit cards.

The problem: when China decides it wants the likes of a Burberry, it will probably buy the entire company. When the Chinese bought Rover, they meticulously and strategically waited to buy precisely the technologies they wanted from the bargain basement. Some Chinese officials have been overheard lamenting the fact that Britain has nothing for them to buy.

So the PM’s charm offensive is a no-brainer. Even if there is little to lose, there is no guarantee that the gains will be large. Mr Cameron went as far as criticising Pakistan to curry favour in India, and it worked.

President Obama is in India now, backing its bid for a UN Security Council seat. Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy have already been down this road. So it is unsurprising that on the back of this unashamed courting process, both India and China are starting to go beyond flexing their economic muscle to using it.

Last month the IMF began to reform itself with more power for the emerging markets at the expense of Europe. This morning the UN looks likely to be next.

“Chindia” brought down the Copenhagen Climate change talks, and Indian reservations scuppered world trade talks too. And now, this week we have an epic public row about the world currency system.

Senior Chinese officials such as the Vice Finance Minister are now openly deriding the most important recent development in US economic policy – $600bn in further money printing announced last week, aka QE2. For China this is a clear case of backdoor currency manipulation, and China should know that when it sees it.

So just as Britain goes to China seeking trade opportunities, the reality is that global economic harmony upon which such relationships flourish, is no longer assured.