David Cameron’s former advisor Steve Hilton this week used the term to describe the People’s Republic, and we should be very wary about casually following his lead.

To knock this one on the head very quickly, can a country with a fifth of the world’s population really be rogue? You would have to imagine that the world would be a far more dangerous place if the Chinese government was actually riding around like an evil supervillain as the term suggests.

If China is a rogue state, does that also mean the four other countries of the BRICS – Russia, China, India and South Africa – who chose to formalise Jim O’Neill’s economic term and focus on promoting the interests of the developing world, are nothing less than henchmen of the beast? This is more than 42% of the world’s population we are talking about here.

If China is a rogue state, what does that make Britain, which against American wishes became the second European country, after Luxembourg, to join its Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank? The bank now consists of 57 countries worldwide and 14 in the European Union.

Given that countries’ cumulatively representing well over half the world’s population are now members of the bank, heaven forbid what would happen if cooperation between these countries was widened to political areas. Could there come a time when those that wish to ostracise China are in fact labelled ‘rogue’ themselves?

And above all, if every country that has committed human rights abuses is a rogue state, the so-called ‘righteous nations’ must be a very small minority.

It is hard to believe the majority of Chinese people are the slightest bit bothered what kind of lesser title their country is given in attempts to ostracise them from the ‘righteous’ states. After all they have seen it all before and know what it is like to be recognised as an actual rogue state, yet China came out the other side with its power enhanced.

The worst excesses of the Communist Party were nearly all committed when the People’s Republic of China was completely ostracised by both the United States and the Soviet Union and Taiwan held the Chinese seat at the UN. Conversely, the seismic shift that allowed China to become a partner we could do business with and a freer country at least by its own standards, were in part due to Nixon’s visit and the PRC’s recognition at the UN in 1972 and mainly due to the rise of Deng Xiaoping to party Chairman in 1976.

As in the former Soviet Union, the reality in China is very different to what some idealists in the media want to believe. Change comes from the top, not the bottom and evolution is extremely positive whereas revolution more often than not leads to disaster (look no further than Syria!).

The aim of the UK politically should be to do everything possible to ensure voices within the Communist Party supporting democracy and human rights are heard, rather than shouted down. The best way to do that is through economic and cultural cooperation. All sanctions, marginalisation and ridiculous labelling will ever achieve is a return to the old guard who believe the UK has a colonial vendetta against China and are happy to look to alternative and less judgemental markets for trade.