In advance of his visit to China, Gordon Brown said it was his intention to promote a rapid expansion of English-speaking in that country via a new wave of teachers and a website. He asserted that if the scheme worked as hoped by 2025 the number of English speakers in China would exceed the tally of speakers of English as a first language in the whole of the rest of the world.

For many ordinary Chinese, this may be the most enticing aspect of his whirlwind trip. The desire to know more about the rest of the world is widespread, notably among the young. The Prime Minister also arrives in a truly crucial year in recent Chinese history. Few beyond her boundaries fully appreciate the impact that holding the Olympics will have on a nation and a population that was kept in semi-isolation for several decades and is still not as engaged with outsiders as it could be.

Deng Xiao Ping's masterplan was to provide his countrymen with internal reform and an external outlook. He succeeded in the first aim and his successors have expanded on his blueprint. He was far less effective in his second quest, with the limited progress made destroyed by the disaster of the Tiananmen Square confrontation.

Chinese leaders remain wary of any involvement in their “internal affairs”. Much of this tour will involve trade and business activity for British company executives. It is entirely right that an opening to promote commercial links is taken, and the contacts made and agreements signed will be welcome. Mr Brown is correct to support the City of London's desire to attract Chinese state investment, particularly as more protectionist instincts on this have become manifest not just in Europe but the US Congress.

A trade trip alone, however, would be a missed opportunity. Politics has to be there along with the economics. This affords a special chance for Mr Brown, who comprehends the links between global economic forces and political outcomes better than the vast majority of his contemporaries. It is often argued that China has to be convinced that it should work within a rules-based international system rather than pursue narrow national self-interests as sharply as it might do.

This is fair to an extent but it fails to recognise that the Chinese political class is entirely comfortable with rules as a concept and the more important that China becomes the more that the virtues of those rules are made self-evident. The real question - possibly the central question for the world over the next two decades - is what the rules will be and what the values are that China will advance with its new-found power.

It is for this reason that Mr Brown should raise and talk about, but above all else be prepared to listen, a more extensive list of subjects than the purely commercial. He has to reach a judgment on the degree to which China can be convinced that concerted international action on climate change is not a ruse simply to restrain its economic potential. He must talk about Africa and persuade China that the support of pliant pseudo client-states such as Sudan is not in the interests either of Beijing or the world's poorest continent. He should seek to assure China that the dilemma faced over energy security amid the fragile politics of the Middle East is one where all the leading economies should make common cause. Yet this has to be a real dialogue in which the legitimate opinions of China itself are solicited.

Mr Brown personally and Britain as a whole could be a positive force for a meeting of minds between politicians and peoples. It will be a splendid situation if his new drive on languages means that many more Chinese people understand us through our vocabulary. It is equally important that we attempt to understand China. More could make a start by learning Chinese.