The city has even honoured Xu, who was one of its most famous scholars, with a memorial made from Beijing marble that has lines from his poem carved into it.

It can be found at the end of King’s College lawn, near the spot where Xu wrote the poem.

Less visible is the city’s growing Chinese population, unless you pass by the Chinatown on Regent Street, where Chinese restaurants are replacing Indian ones.

Over the last decade or so, China has become a key partner in Cambridge’s development as the centre of what was marketed as “Silicon Fen”, after the region’s wetlands.

It supplies some of China’s best technicians and scientists. Many end up making the city their permanent home and some were former students.

Like in many other British universities, Chinese form the largest foreign student group in Cambridge. In the 2017-18 academic year there were 420 undergraduates and 754 postgraduates at the university.

“There has been a rapid increase in the number of Chinese students particularly postgraduates working in a whole range of faculties and a significant number staying on to do research on projects and gain jobs,” said Lewis Herbert, leader of Labour-led Cambridge City Council.

“Despite being a small city, Cambridge hosts world leading tech from AI to chip research and a whole range of hi-tech specialist companies, many who have links with China.”

Cambridge now has the highest proportion of Chinese-born people in the whole of the UK – more than London or Manchester – and Chinese make up nearly 5 per cent of the city’s population of around 150,000.

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“The poem makes a big difference,” said Claire Ruskin, chief executive of Cambridge Network, an organisation that has been forging alliances between the university, local start-ups and global corporations for more than 20 years.

“When Chinese people come to Cambridge they love it, stay a bit and bring families here. We make them very welcome. We have a lot of common language in terms of the technology.”

Britain has yet to declare whether it will follow the US and ban the company from taking part in its 5G networks.

The decision is a tough one, not least because of London’s growing commercial ties with Beijing and the need to secure a trade deal if Britain leaves the European Union.

Brexit will also require a trade agreement with the US, putting the UK in a position where it has to choose.

“If [the] UK collaborates with Huawei there would be a promising future on both sides,” Liu Xioaming, the Chinese ambassador to the UK, said told the BBC this month.

Not giving the tech company the role it seeks he said, would “send a bad signal, not only on trade but on investment”.

“Chinese investment is booming in this country,” he said. “Even last year it increased by 14 per cent, but if you shut the door for Huawei – it sends very bad and negative message to other Chinese businesses.”

Big American companies are already present in Cambridge.

Amazon has built a research centre for delivery drones next to the main railway station and Apple, Qualcomm and Microsoft all have AI research centres – as does South Korea’s Samsung.

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Cambridge is the home of British multinational semiconductor and software design company Arm Holdings, which is now owned by Japan’s Softbank group.

For now, Huawei’s presence in the city, is less visible.

The Shenzhen-based firm has a five-year, £25 million (US$31 million) partnership with British telecoms giant BT and Cambridge University, and a shared office in a science park in the north of the city.

In May, the company said it acquired a 222-hectare (550-acre) site in the nearby village of Sawston, where it wants to build a chip research and development facility, just up the road from Arm.

“The Huawei site will create an initial 400 jobs and is welcomed locally but we need to see which way the UK goes,” Herbert said, referring to the 5G decision. “Overall our inclination is the UK should tread its own path and not be pushed into decisions by a foreign government.”

Arm had been an important Huawei partner but after the new plant was announced, Arm bowed to US pressure and suspended its contracts with Huawei.

The Huawei issue dominated the conversation between young Chinese and Western entrepreneurs over coffee and sandwiches at a seminar in the science park last month that was organised by the Cambridge China Centre, a networking club set up to promote technology businesses.

Guest speaker Jiang Sunan, minister counsellor for technology at the Chinese embassy, made a presentation on technology research and investment trends in China.

“This [Huawei] ban is not just about business or like a cold war, it is also anti-globalisation,” Jiang said.

Arm’s decision to cancel its contract with Huawei was unfair as the company made a lot of money in China, according to Jiang.

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Ruskin also finds the political climate damaging.

“Politicians make big decisions that effect us all that are not always built on evidence,” she said. “Tech products are very complex. Companies based in Cambridge like Arm have developed all kinds of products with Chinese products incorporated into them.”

A Chinese company is also behind the expansion of Cambridge Science Park, which was established by Trinity College nearly 50 years ago as part of a UK government drive to increase knowledge exchange and research between the university and the emerging technology industries.

TusPark, part of Tsinghua University, is involved in a £200 million (US$251 million) joint venture to build more laboratories and offices, including a bio-innovation centre for medical research.

Last month China’s Qingdao province opened the China-UK Qingdao Overseas Innovation Centre in the park.

The week earlier a delegation from Yangzhou, Jiangsu province led by Chen Yang, vice-mayor of Yangzhou, visited TusPark Cambridge.

That visit no doubt helped Cambridgeshire County Council secure rent-free offices in Yangzhou, to boost trade.

Huawei also has offices in TusPark.

“Cambridge has 16 companies that have gone through the billion dollar valuation and some of those are going onwards and upwards and that’s fantastic,” Ruskin said.

She said funding for start-ups and scale-ups in Cambridge was still strong, but the political climate was like “putting [up] big barriers” to block “products going worldwide”.

With a staff of eight, Cambridge-based start-up Crayfish is a service broker between UK and Chinese companies that want to expand into each other’s markets.

The company was founded by Ting Zhang, who moved to Cambridge after her import-export business was hit by the Asian financial crisis in 1997.

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“Cambridge always seemed so romantic because of the poem, which made me want to come,” she said. “And it was true because I met my husband here.”

Crayfish has a global network of freelance translators, offers training and consultancies in Chinese business culture and human resource issues and even helps find placements for interns.

Zhang recently visited China for discussions with officials about the implications of the US-China trade war.

“If we look from the British side it’s not bad because the US is closing doors to China in tech and that opens the door to British tech and services companies. You are seeing more Chinese visits to the UK because they don’t feel welcome in the US.”

For now, Cambridge is continuing to welcome Chinese people and investment.

The rising number of visitors led the council to limit the size of tour groups, but they are generally welcomed by local businesses.

The nearest large airport, Stansted, hopes to introduce direct flights for Chinese carriers over the next two years.

“One of our ambitions is for it to be the Chinese gateway to the east of England and help attract more investors and tourists to the region,” said Jonathan Oates, Corporate Affairs Director of Stansted Airport.

The hope is direct flights would increase the amount of time and money spent in the region by Chinese visitors and make it energy and time efficient for businesspeople and officials flying in.

Meanwhile, Ruskin is concerned increased trade and political tensions with China could damage cooperation on solving Cambridge’s growing congestion problem, which includes developing electric buses.

“In China, an underground system is put in in two years … and in the UK it will take us 10 plus,” she said. “We can learn from each other.”