It avoided a saga that would have dragged on for weeks, potentially - not so much washing the party's dirty linen in public as opening a Chinese laundry on the steps of the Senedd.
Other Chinese developers are taking similar steps abroad, building vacation homes in Southeast Asia, resorts in South Korea and high-rise condos in New York and Sydney.
The Bush administration's failure to confront Beijing surely emboldened Chinese officials and made it harder to persuade them to take stepsin everyone's interest.