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."