You might have noticed the Chinese president rolled into the country last night.

Given who he represents, it’s been a pretty low key affair by way of build-up. China in some respects is the future of the world. No one is growing like they are - certainly not in terms of the size of the country and the combination of the growth, and certainly not in terms of what that growth means trade wise to this country. India is growing, but not as fast and they’re not as sophisticated by way of an economy as China is.

Now China is not America in terms of size and influence, but they’re catching them. China is the second biggest economy on the planet and they like us. It would seem at times they like us more than we like them.

Despite all that’s happened between our two countries trade wise, there remains this most unfortunate residual suspicion that they’re up to no good.

If this was the American president visiting, we’d be falling over ourselves. The lead up would have been days in the making. There would be wall to wall coverage. Yet the Chinese bloke turns up and he may as well be from Estonia.

At some point we need to sober up and cut them a bit of slack. At some point we need to realise that they’re not the enemy, they’re not invading the country, and just because they’re not like us it doesn’t mean they’re not decent people who can potentially be of enormous help to us.

The fact this bloke has been to the country before says something about his desire to work hard on the relationship and show some signs of genuine reform. When was the last time a US president dropped in? If memory serves me it was in the 90s and it was Clinton. Before that you had to go back to the 70s if not the 60s.

For all our closeness and forelock tugging towards the Amercians, for all our desperation over a free trade deal with them or our keenness in a partial deal through the TPP, we haven’t got one. But we have with the Chinese and we were the first. Two way trade has exploded out to $20 billion and it’s growing. That’s actually doing business, not talking about it but doing it.

Did you see that bloke on the news on Tuesday night, the bloke who bought the Hilton in Queenstown? He was on the news because he’s Chinese. That’s the stuff that has to change. The story should have been about the jobs and expansion. He’s the same bloke who bought Crafar Farms and has spent a fortune improving the place. The same bloke that bought Lochinver Station and allowed the family who had owned it to take their money and invest it in the quarry business and potentially employ 8000 people.

With foreign money comes expansion, jobs, growth, improvement and opportunities.  This is what trading nations do - they open their doors and they do deals. China, in many respects, is our future. We either get on board with that or miss out.