China has a habit of making western companies wriggle. There was Google – slogan: “Don’t be evil” – squirming over its decision to self-censor its Chinese website.

There was Rupert Murdoch telling this newspaper last year that he had dropped the BBC from his Star TV service for purely commercial reasons, when anyone with an uncensored internet connection could read his 1994 admission that he had done it to please the Chinese government.