China-UK ties: Breaking ice, building bridges

Jack Perry Jr. is the chairman of The 48 Group in the UK, an organization founded in the wake of the 1953 Icebreaker Mission. That's when Jack Perry Sr. led a landmark delegation that signed the first 30-million-pound (about $38 million) trade agreement between China and the West. Seventy years later, his grandson Perry Jr. is back in China, amazed by its technological advances and once again calling for bridge-building in uncertain times. "Businesses crave stability," he says.

Chairman of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT), Ren Hongbin, responds: "China is ready to be the 'icebreaker' once more – building bridges for win-win cooperation in a world that urgently needs it."