Memo to Mélanie Joly from the John Robson Realpolitik Agency re improving relations with China.

Dear Ms. Joly,

It’s keen being foreign minister of a G7 nation, isn’t it? But also a lot of bother, with so many ways to look silly by shaking hands with murderous tyrants nobody warned you about. And now the communist regime in China says they want to be friends again, but aren’t they sort of meanies? To help you navigate this confusing file, where being chirpily well-meaning doesn’t seem to cut it, we offer a few pointers.

First, yes, it’s the same China that’s been meddling in our elections and for some reason the public is a bit sensitive about wilful blindness here.

Second, as a committed multiculturalist you may not know they do things differently in other places. Here, government consists of goofily spending endless amounts of money on anything that seems cool and more will magically appear, you can ignore yucky stuff like defence, and nothing seems to have real consequences. But in Beijing they have a less, uh, relaxed view of the world.