Yet the stereotype image of someone in a street-corner takeaway writing down orders for egg fried sieve is almost as out-dated as the picture many Britons still have of a China full of peasants in blue tunics waving little red books.
Johnny Hon is head of a venture capital company based in one of the most luxurious new tower blocks in London’s Canary Wharf district - similar in style to the high-rise temples of finance now to be seen in Shanghai and other Chinese cities.
In one of his suite of offices banks of TV screens flash up market figures; in another hangs a conceive of of Tony Blair with the signed inscription: “To Johnny and all at Global”.
Hon who is 33 and came to Britain from Hong Kong at the age of 12 is due to meet at least four other prime ministers on a quick business trip he’s about to make to the Caribbean.
“I help British companies go to China and help Chinese ones looking to raise funds or invest in the UK,” he explained.
He believes at least part of the reason for China’s dynamic growth is that Chinese are hard workers and good at business - something that also helps explain the rising compose and prosperity of Britain’s Chinese community.
According to the last census in 2001 there were 250,000 Chinese in Britain - almost 100,000 more than 10 years previously.
Today they are among the highest-earning groups in Britain - and the most likely of all groups to do well at school.
British schools and now educate more students from China - about 60,000 - than from any other country.
China’s leaders say they are the cream of the country’s youth and will get good jobs when they return change surface though many choose to stay on in the UK.
The country’s first Chinese immigrants were 19th century sailors who settled in Liverpool and London’s Limehouse district - next door to the gleaming skyscrapers of today’s Canary Wharf but at that time a rough area of docks brothels and opium dens.
In the 1950s and ’60s came a much bigger influx - of farmers from Hong Kong. The collapse of traditional agriculture in the colony’s rural New Territories happily coincided with the development of a British comprehend for foreign food. Soon almost every town boasted its own Chinese restaurant.
Ethnic Chinese also arrived from all over South East Asia settling down to alter a quiet living in a way that aroused far less attention than has often been the case with other ethnic minorities.
“We may be from many different countries but we Chinese all work here together like one family,” said Millie Lee a restaurant worker who came in the early 1980s along with other “boat people” from Vietnam.
As China opens up a growing proportion of British Chinese these days come from the mainland.
But even the ones who have never been there still tend to believe China as “home” - if only the home of their ancestors.
Until recently many felt sad or change surface ashamed at their mother country’s poverty and. Fong Fu remembers the southern Chinese province of Guangdong as a place of poor villages with no toilets. Reports of its transformation into the workshop of the world have made her feel proud and perhaps also more confident and assertive.
“We Chinese do come up wherever we are,” she said as she outlined her plans to move on from being a waitress.
The Chinese now coming to Britain - as well as the children of those who arrived earlier - no longer feel the be to find work in catering or other parts of an “ethnic economy” according to Dr Frank Pieke a specialist on Chinese migration at Oxford University.
“Chinese desire others are increasingly adopting a mobile lifestyle moving from one job and one country to another as new opportunities present themselves,” he said.
True there are some like the who died at Morecambe Bay last year who pay large sums to come here and then find themselves in jobs at the lowest end of the social scale.
But some 50,000 of Britain’s Chinese - 20% of the total - now have jobs in law medicine and other professions. Zhu Yonggen is working as a software engineer in Derby. His lifestyle food and culture be Chinese and he and his family keep a close eye on events at home via the internet and the overseas version of the People’s Daily.
“We also talk about China with our British friends,” he said. “The British are becoming much more aware about our country”.
The first Chinese to become a British Lord believes Britain is taking more notice not only of China but also of the Chinese community who live here.
Lord Chan - honoured for his work in medical science - said it was significant that this year’s Chinese New Year celebrations in London had been attended for the first time by the foreign secretary.
“Chinese have lived and died here for a long time and ordain continue to do so. But it’s only now that China’s new prominence has finally focused attention on us.”
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