DAVID CAMERON and George Osborne set much store by the success of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit, which begins today.

Well they might. Despite the hype around a Chinese slowdown, its economy continues to grow at more than double the rate of any Western nation’s. It is set to account for well over a third of all global growth this year.

Chinese and British authorities are united in a desire for increased trade, and there is nothing to object to in that.

China has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty over the past couple of decades and the “economic miracle” continues, with greater numbers of Chinese workers in a position to buy Western products every year. China is already our fifth-biggest export market.

Beijing is also keen to invest in Britain. But the relationship unfolding between our countries risks being an unequal one.

This is down to the contrast between the attitudes of the British and Chinese governments.

Chinese investment in domestic industry and infrastructure is massive, Britain’s is negligible. A contrast epitomised by the shutdown of the Redcar furnaces in the week we play host to the world’s biggest steel producer.

China is a global leader in green technology — particularly solar and wind power — and this summer unveiled a £4-trillion-plus green investment plan to cut its emissions, where Cameron and Osborne have slashed subsidies for renewable energy and prioritise dirty and dangerous “alternatives” such as fracking and nuclear.

Indeed, nuclear energy will be one of the key areas of debate this week as China gets ready to build a nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point.

The venture will win French transnational EDF and its Chinese public-sector partners decades of subsidised super-profits as a price three times the market rate has been guaranteed by our government for a 35-year period.

It builds on existing Chinese investments in our infrastructure, which include stakes in Heathrow airport and Thames Water.

Voices in the liberal press have denounced China’s involvement as a “security risk.” The Morning Star does not share their knee-jerk suspicion of Beijing, which is based on hostility to its political system rather than evidence.

But socialists should note that China would be unlikely to tolerate such a deal in reverse.

Alongside other “strategically important sectors” which represent the commanding heights of the economy — oil, coal, transport, telecoms, finance and more — public control of “power generation and distribution” is enshrined in Chinese law.

It was among red lines introduced in 2006, when then State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission chairman Li Rongrong noted: “State capital must play a leading role in these sectors, which are the vital arteries of the national economy and essential to national security.”

Details on the scale of permissible private investment have fluctuated since, but public-sector dominance remains.

Our own government — which has no concept of “national interest” as distinct from the profits made by private firms, often at taxpayers’ expense — will not lift a finger to give the British public a similar controlling stake in our own economy.

It’s no use condemning China for taking up contracts that will give it handsome returns, any more than we can blame French and German state-owned rail firms for using profits made on our privatised network to improve services back home. They’re operating in their own people’s interests.

But we have a right to demand that our own representatives in Parliament do the same. Energy, water and transport are natural monopolies. They belong in public hands.