LAST week when the Prime Minister returned from China, I nearly fell off my seat when an Opposition spokesman complained that he had gone there at all, let alone for a second time.

Then a lady in Ringwood stopped me in the street at the weekend to tell me how worried she was about allowing the Chinese to invest in Britain, because it would enable them to “control” us.

The political and economic reality is that last year China became the world’s largest trading nation and by next year it is set to become the world’s largest importer of goods. Soon enough it will overtake the USA as the world’s biggest economy. We can treat these developments as a threat or as an opportunity.

Our history as a maritime, open, free-trading nation naturally leads us towards the latter approach. China is doing what Britain did after the industrial revolution – and what we are still doing: exporting capital.

We have invested overseas, so it would be hypocrisy were we to complain about China doing likewise.

China has generated a huge trade surplus in recent years and it is inevitable that they should wish to invest some of that surplus in profitable ventures overseas.

In Britain we need that investment to prevent future power shortages as so many of our power stations reach the end of their lives and have to be replaced. We also need it for our creaking transport infrastructure. The notion that allowing this investment gives another country control over us is nonsense.

The Prime Minister and his delegation arrived back with deals worth £5.6bn from the trip: they agreed a UK-Chinese healthcare deal worth more than £120m; they signed a new football partnership between the Premier League and the Chinese Super League; they championed an EU-China free trade deal which could be worth £1.8bn a year to the UK economy; they signed an agreement for a five-year programme of cultural exchanges which will include 2014-15 tours of China by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Northern Ballet and Shakespeare’s Globe; and they launched a campaign to make Britain the most welcoming destination in Europe for Chinese visitors. I think it was time very well spent.

Also last week, another Opposition spokesman made me, not so much fall off my seat, as leap out of it. He was crowing about the pretty poor performance of our pupils in the international league tables.

On December 3, the Programme of International Student Assessment announced the results of their triennial international survey of schools’ performance in mathematics, reading and science. Our boys and girls were 25th in maths, 23rd in reading and 18th in science.

Quite shocking really, when you remember that our own domestic exam results have been getting better and better every year: We have been fooling ourselves and our children.

The irony is that the tests were conducted in 2010 and the pupils who participated in them had been educated almost entirely under the former government’s regime.

At least the head of the organisation responsible for the testing and the league tables was good enough to acknowledge that the results were not in any way a measure of this government’s reforms. What they should do, however, is act as a wake-up call to all those teachers who write to me complaining about the reforms.

They need to recognise that all the time they said their pupils were getting cleverer and cleverer, they were actually falling behind. Government and parents have recognised this and are doing something about it. I am not sure that the teaching profession has entirely cottoned-on yet. Some are still even writing to me threatening strike action to oppose reforms that, as these league tables show, are so desperately necessary.