This week, Xi Jinping is in Great Britain for a state visit, his first since assuming leadership of China nearly three years ago. Britain’s government under David Cameron has signaled—increasingly loudly in recent months—that it hopes to usher in a “golden age” of British-Chinese relations, one which will see China become Britain’s second-largest trading partner and one in which overt criticism of China’s politics or of its human rights record will be muted. In anticipation of Xi’s arrival, George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, called for Britain to become, “China’s best partner in the West,” a sentiment Xi lauded as “visionary and strategic” as he departed for London on Monday. Is it? Is Britain placing undue emphasis on gaining Chinese favor in trade? Will other priorities suffer? Will China be Britain’s best partner in “the East”? What does Osborne’s posture mean for China’s relations elsewhere in Europe? In the U.S.? —The Editors