Enjoying the 'most exciting place in the world'

"I feel very privileged to be here. To me, this is the most exciting place in the world to be right now," he says.

"For some years already, I have believed that the agenda for the world in the 21th century is being set here.

It is because of the scale of China, it is because China has industrialized at a scale and speed that no other country in history has ever done before," he adds.

"And I cannot help but be fascinated. I try to understand what this means, what is going to be the impact on the rest of the world.

I don't know, but it is tremendously interesting to be part of it, to see it, to observe it. That's why I want to be here."

Michie used to work as speechwriter, reporter and producer and then consultant to a number of multinational corporations such as HSBC, Prudential and Standard Chartered.

Now he is the adviser with strategy advice leader, NICG, offering consulting service to multinationals that want to expand their businesses in China and to Chinese companies that want to explore markets overseas.

Michie found that in business practice both China and the West make many mistakes and thus create unnecessary misunderstandings. This happened because, on the one hand, most people in the West know very little about life in China, and there is not enough Chinese studies in their education system.