China in £800m Manchester airport deal George Osborne on Sunday announced that the Beijing Construction Engineering Group had entered the £800m project to redevelop Manchester airport as the chancellor kicked off his five-day tour of China. BCEG will join Carillion and the Greater Manchester Pension Fund to build a business district at the airport. It is the first of a series of deals that the chancellor is expected to unveil on a visit that Britain hopes will unlock a wave of Chinese investment in UK infrastructure. Mr Osborne is also expected to sign a deal allowing a state-owned Chinese company to build nuclear power stations in the UK and have its reactor design approved by British regulators. Under the deal, the government will give its backing to Chinese General Nuclear Power Group entering EDF's planned new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point. BCEG is backed by the state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the world's biggest bank. Mr Osborne pitched the deal as evidence that his government wanted to spread investment across the UK. I am determined that Britain does not repeat the mistakes of the past that saw investment and growth only concentrated in the City of London, important as it is; but instead to make sure investment from China flows to all parts of the country. Our economic plan is about securing a recovery for all parts of the country. China's stake in the new Airport City "enterprise zone" in Manchester will be one of the country's biggest investments in the UK outside London. The project will transform 150 acres of scrubland and parking into 5m sq ft of offices, shops and parkland, creating an estimated 16,000 jobs in the next 15 years. The investments come after a strained period between China and Britain. Diplomatic ties were cut early last year when David Cameron's decision to meet the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, in London angered Beijing. The Chinese government subsequently cancelled numerous meetings with senior UK ministers, leading to concerns that the UK could lose out to France and Germany in its efforts to tap into Chinese investment. Relations between the two nations have been restored in recent months and cemented at the G20 summit in St Petersburg this month when Ki Jinping, China's president, invited Mr Cameron to visit Beijing. The prime minister will lead a trade delegation to China later this year. Ed Davey, energy minister, began the rapprochement last month with a 10-day tour to China to drum up investment in Britain's energy markets.