In this paper I examine British policy towards the Yuan Shikai government in China between 1912 and 1914 through a consideration of the role of Britain's ‘men on the spot’ in China (i.e. British diplomats and bankers resident there). In doing so, I synthesize two bodies of literature that rarely interact: British imperial history and work by China historians. Three main elements shaped British policy in China: first, British policy-makers were determined to support Yuan Shikai's consolidation of power in China; second, in the making of its China policy, the Foreign Office relied heavily on Britain's men on the spot; and, finally, these men were anxious about the vulnerability of the Yuan Shikai government and were therefore manipulated to a certain extent by Chinese politicians. I suggest that British policy-makers were reacting to, rather than controlling, Chinese politics and that in this period collaboration with British imperialism was a rational choice for the Yuan Shikai government.

About 20 years ago, the discovery of an AlN buffer layer lead to the breakthrough in epitaxial growth of GaN layers with mirror-like surface, using a metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) technique on sapphire substrates. Since then, extensive efforts have been continued to develop a conductive buffer layer/substrate for MOCVD-grown GaN layers to improve light emission of GaN light-emitting diodes. In the present study, we produced MOCVD-grown, continuous, flat epitaxial GaN layers on nitrogen enriched TiN buffer layers with the upper limit of the nitrogen content of TiN deposited at room temperature (RT) on sapphire substrates. It was concluded that the nitrogen enrichment would reduce significantly the TiN/GaN interfacial energy. The RT deposition of the TiN buffer layers suppresses their grain growth during the nitrogen enrichment and the grain size refining must increase nucleation site of GaN. In addition, threading dislocation density in the GaN layers grown on TiN was much lower than that in the GaN layers grown on AlN.