Inside China's most exclusive business club

Those views can sometimes be expressed in very forthright terms, and not necessarily just within the club and in China. In 2011, 35 CEC members embarked on a trip to the US, the following year they visited Britain and last year they visited Belgium and France.

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In Brussels, Huang Nubo, chairman of the real estate developer Beijing Zhongkun Investment Group Co Ltd, whose plans to buy a 300-square-kilometer chunk of Iceland had run into heavy opposition in the country, met European Commission President Jose Manuel Durao Barroso and said: "I'm a businessman. I invested in Iceland so my company would grow, which would also create jobs in Iceland and benefit its economy. But some people have turned it into a political issue. What exactly are they afraid of?"

In the US they attended about 40 events in 12 days, meeting White House officials, Wall Street executives, Silicon Valley experts, thriving entrepreneurs and academics.

In Britain in 2012, their economic and political heft became all the more apparent when British Prime Minister David Cameron received them at 10 Downing Street. Last year French President Francois Hollande received them at the Elysee Palace.

However, Cheng is anxious to dispel the notion that CEC activities have no aim other than to advance its members' self-interest. In fact, publicity about CEC has helped give the public a more-rounded picture of the entrepreneurs, she says.

"There are even some people who say it is refreshing to find a group that looks at things differently."

Those people have realized that Chinese entrepreneurs are not unprincipled operators who will do anything to succeed and who don't care about the environment, but that they believe in fair competition, she says.

Last year the group received unflattering publicity when comments made by Liu Chuanzhi of Lenovo Group Ltd in a closed-door meeting became public.

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