If England, to quote Adam Smith, is a nation of shopkeepers, then China is a nation of entrepreneurs. And China’s most successful entrepreneur, Jack Ma, is also its biggest celebrity. Photos of the founder of Alibaba, whose personal fortune is estimated by both Forbes and Hurun at $US40 billion ($57 billion), hang in people’s houses, often coupled with one of his motivational aphorisms: “Believe in your dream and believe in yourself,” says one. Says another: “Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.”

But sunshine is not what Ma sees when he casts his eye to the horizon. “It is a world full of hope, it is a world full of worries. The world needs leadership,” he says, emphasising the point with a clenched fist.