It is now 4 weeks since I returned from China on my visit organised by the British Council. My mind is still whirling with impressions, plans and possibilities.

I undoubtedly went with some mistaken preconceptions about what China would be like, probably based on a mixture of reading Wild Swans, news coverage during my lifetime - including some very powerful images like that of the Tianunmen Square demonstrations in the late 80s - an expectation that life would be fairly basic for most of the people and, not least, the notion that a communist regime would involve very strict social control, externally and explicitly applied, possibly manifesting itself in a large police presence in public places.

It took about 72 hours for all of those preconceptions to be washed aside and I am left now with the sense of a country brimming with potential, populated by an incredibly industrious people who are proud of their historical heritage. They are law-abiding and very friendly. There is no need for overt policing, and the police are not around, in contrast to the USA and many European countries.

I sense a country which is culturally and politically at a crossroads, with Starbucks coffee, McDonalds and KFC - even Dunkin' Donuts, for heaven's sake - in all the cities we visited somehow sitting side by side with street vendors cooking whole birds on braziers and the notion of the Party Secretary being the person as important as the Principal in all the schools we visited. We saw only their best schools, I surmise, but they were amazingly well resourced with the most motivated, most conforming and best behaved pupils I have every seen, all of them desperate to practise their English and to make contact with the outside world.

Within our hotels, we met businessmen from Europe, America, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.

I went with the clear vision that if the 19th century was Europe's and the 20th century America's, then the 21st century would be Asia's and if it is Asia's it will certainly be China's. I returned home with that vision a certainty. One fifth of the world's population lives in China ; they have something in the order of 8% year on year economic growth; they have just joined the World Trade Organisation; and by 2020 they could have the largest single economy in the world. If we do not encourage and give our young people the qualities to engage with this teeming, vigorous country, then we shall stand and watch the centre of the world's economic gravity move away from us until it disappears out of sight.

Tim Andrew
Chesham High School