The most significant problem is that my wife has to remain in the UK most of the time as one of my daughters is a world ranked dressage rider and my wife helps with the practical side of this. So we compensate by taking incredible China holidays ranging from classic tourist sites (Great Wall, Terracotta Warriors) to a "swimming pool" rest holiday in the island resort of Hainan, which was so comfortable that I am slightly embarrassed to say we never left the hotel complex for 10 days! As we adore good food China's inexhaustible cuisine is integrated in these plans—my wife saying I raved about fish I ate at Yichang on the Yangtze for two years before I could take her there (after sampling she deemed it worth waiting).

I love poetry and have long read in translation classic Chinese poets—my personal favorite being Li Bai, perhaps because he was famous for his liking of wine. My Chinese friends vastly improved my literary knowledge.

In another cultural direction I worked with and came to like the Chinese pop star Li Yuchun/Chris Lee—winner of a Chinese equivalent of Pop Idol. I teach about her in courses on branding and some Chinese readers of Lee Weekly were doubtless bemused to find a foreign economics professor rated as one of her top 10 fans in 2012!

Last year's great discovery was that computer translation technology has improved to a point that makes possible not only reading Chinese media, but participating in Weibo—the Chinese microblogging parallel of Twitter. Via Weibo I can communicate not only with colleagues and friends, but enormous numbers of Chinese netizens—in 10 months I received 66,000 Weibo comments. Netizens turned from virtual into physical friends in several cities.

Are there difficulties to being in China from a foreigner's perspective? From a practical point of view there are very few. Culturally the most difficult thing to adjust to is the Chinese unwillingness to say "no" in a direct fashion. It wastes a lot of time—I prefer American directness. But apart from that the openness of people in China is very familiar to a multicultural Londoner.

Professionally the most annoying problem in analysis of China is sloppy statistical arguments—too much use of anecdotes instead of serious quantification. After writing about China's economy for over 20 years I have grown tired, if slightly amused, by habitual predictions of an imminent crash in China's economy. Such inaccurate predictions over several decades usually turn out to be based on some anecdote instead of serious statistics. This allows ridiculous myths about China's economy to be spread—for example that its investment is inefficient, when it is actually far more efficient than the United States or Europe; or that China has been slow in developing consumption when it has had the fastest growth of consumption of any major economy.

But all this is secondary to the main facts. China has the fastest growing major economy in world history. By being in China today you are participating in history in a way not possible in any other country. For an individual, what is important in that could be business opportunities, to be at the cutting edge of economic trends, to see hundreds of millions of people achieve a decent living standard, and to see the evolution of a country that is simultaneously the oldest and most modern in the world. But at this point in history China is where the world's action is—it is the place to be.

It is also "win-win." Provided a foreigner remembers they are a guest in China's house, they do not own it, the hospitality of its people is tremendous. A foreigner learns from China while it learns from other countries. It is a basis of equality—the most solid of foundations for mutual respect and appreciation.

To see history made, to take advantage of the openings created in countless fields, to be able to combine that with culture and good food, is irresistible. A Chinese dream.

The author is a visiting professor at Antai College, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and senior fellow of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China

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