Over 200 years ago, Lord Macartney set sail to China in the hopes of opening more of the Middle Kingdom up to trade with England. The mission was a failure, as the Emperor Qianlong declared his celestial dynasty needed nothing the faraway island could produce.
George Osborne, the British chancellor of the exchequer, and Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, invited obvious comparisons with the 18th-century mission when they both journeyed to China this month with the explicit aim of boosting their nation’s trade with Asia’s rising economic giant. U.K. law firms are betting that they will meet with greater success than Macartney did.
