The picture of the Union Jack next to a portrait of the former Chinese leader Mao Zedong was an impressive backdrop.
But when David Cameron, the prime minister, and Li Keqiang, the Chinese premier, told a news conference that the Chinese could invest in the £50bn High Speed 2 railway line from London to the north of England, it was greeted with a degree of scepticism in the infrastructure industry.
“It’s just so far off,” said Richard Threlfall, head of infrastructure at KPMG. “This is about diplomacy, not High Speed 2. High Speed 2 faces a lot of challenges – approval by parliament, a sceptical public, how to reduce the cost of it, how ultimately the country pays for it – but the financing isn’t one of them.”