COINCIDENCE would have it that the first ambassador Jeremy Hanley, new minister with special responsibility for Hong Kong, met this week - within hours of taking office - was China's Joint Liaison Group head Zhou Jihua.
In Chinese diplomacy much depends on developing a personal rapport with the people you are dealing with, and the former Conservative Party chairman was doing just that with Mr Zhou in his large first-floor office.
Douglas Hurd, who exuded experience with every comment and gesture during his tenure as foreign secretary, had developed that kind of valued personal rapport with Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen, who will visit Britain in October.
But his successor Malcolm Rifkind, a lawyer by background, is every bit as fleet-footed intellectually as his forebear, and he has the bonus of a new atmosphere of growing trust between Britain and China.
'It might be an advantage to have a new man at the Foreign Office now,' commented Michael Yahuda, reader in international relations at the London School of Economics and a respected Sinologist. 'They should be able to put the acrimony of the recent past behind them.' The former defence secretary had made no secret of his desire to take over after Mr Hurd's retirement. A former junior minister there, he came with an outstanding reputation for being cool, cautious and calculating.
John Major liked to rely on Mr Hurd's great experience and is therefore likely to play a more direct role in foreign policy for the time being, but nobody expects Mr Rifkind to play second fiddle to anyone. The new broom sweeping through the Foreign Office is not naive.