SEBASTIAN SHAKESPEARE: Career girl Zara has more reason than most to celebrate 'dynamic' new relationship with the Chinese

By Sebastian Shakespeare for the Daily Mail

Published: 18:02 EST, 22 November 2015 | Updated: 19:33 EST, 22 November 2015

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When the Queen welcomed China’s president, Xi Jinping, to Britain last month, she hailed it as a ‘milestone’ in relations with the Communist nation.

‘We have much reason to celebrate the dynamic, growing economic relationship between our countries,’ she told him.

Her Majesty’s granddaughter Zara Phillips would appear to have more reason than most to celebrate. For I can reveal the company of which she’s a director has received huge investment from three top Chinese businessmen.

Her Majesty’s granddaughter Zara Phillips would appear to have more reason than most to celebrate Britain's new relationship with China

The trio have snapped up more than a third of the shares in Xinex Corporation, a Mayfair-based firm that aims to make a fortune via the internet.

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Xinex signed up Olympic silver medallist Zara for the equestrian’s first company directorship earlier this year. It plans to launch various technology ventures.

Internet tycoon Zhu Jun, who has served as a member of the Communist Party’s Political Consultative Conference in notoriously corrupt Guangdong Province since 2012, has bought a major stake in Xinex.

According to the latest Companies House figures, his compatriot Yongxiong Zheng has obtained a similarly large stake, while a third investor, Maoji Wang, has a smaller holding.

‘We are delighted to have Zara as a non-executive director,’ a Xinex spokesman tells me. ‘She is bringing her wealth of experience in advising on equestrian-related matters. We are confident that Xinex will become a shining example of the huge commercial advantages that can be gained through a closer economic relationship between the UK and China.’

It is not yet known how much Zara, 34, will be paid, but she makes about £1 million a year already from other business deals. As well as lucrative contracts with sponsors Rolex and Land Rover, she recently brought out a collection of horsey jewellery.

Her husband, former England rugby captain Mike Tindall, has spoken proudly of their commercial success. ‘They (the royals) don’t give us any money,’ the Yorkshireman said in January. ‘We look after ourselves . . . ’

To think, Zara’s uncle Prince Charles once dismissed the Chinese regime as those ‘appalling old waxworks’.

Has Kitty met a new man in Oz?

As Lady Kitty Spencer enjoys the sunshine Down Under, no one shivering back home will be more envious than property tycoon Niccolo Barattieri di San Pietro.

Grey-bearded Niccolo, 44, who had been courting Princess Diana’s niece, 24, for more than a year, was conspicuous by his absence as she frolicked in a peachy bikini on Sydney’s Bondi Beach.

As Lady Kitty Spencer (pictured) enjoys the sunshine Down Under, no one shivering back home will be more envious than property tycoon Niccolo Barattieri di San Pietro

Princess Diana's niece, 24, was spotted chatting to a handsome mystery man on her Australian tour

Instead, she was accompanied by a handsome mystery man considerably younger than Niccolo.

When I asked Earl Spencer’s daughter last month how things were going with Niccolo, she pulled a face and told me she didn’t want to talk about it. She split up with her previous beau, cricketer Nick Compton, in 2013, just a month after he was omitted from England’s tour of Australia. Now poor Niccolo seems to have been dropped from Lady Kitty’s own Antipodean tour.

He was once Andrew Lloyd Webber’s personal chef, but Duncan Basterfield seems to have found serving multiple peers of the realm too much — for he has resigned as head chef at the House of Lords after less than a year.

One member sniffed that the restaurants — which serve delicacies such as roulade of pigeon and are subsidised to the tune of around £1.5 million a year — were going ‘downmarket, like Prezzo or Ask’.

Basterfield will now head catering at Champneys Health Resorts, whose regulars include Cherie Blair, so it’s out of the frying pan into the fire...