In those roles, he has made significant contributions to bilateral relations. During President Xi Jinping's 2015 state visit to the UK, Graham helped organize a tour of the Houses of Parliament. This year, Graham also accompanied British Prime Minister Theresa May on visit to China.

As MP for the Gloucester constituency, he has helped local businesses accelerate their China engagement and organized meetings in Parliament to help fellow MPs understand and engage with the country.

All these efforts and achievements stem from Graham's affection for and fascination with China, which hark back to his first visit in 1980, two years after China introduced its reform and opening-up policy, accelerating its engagement with the outside world.

It was a time when China-UK relations were almost exclusively government-to-government, and Graham's visit was part of a business trip by representatives from the British conglomerate John Swire& Sons.

Graham recalled the "strange feeling" he had of being an outsider when he first arrived in China, back when people dressed in Zhongshan suits, which had four front pockets and a short collar. He said he instantly purchased a Zhongshan suit for himself, "to make me look a bit more normal, and no longer so strange".

In the 1980s and '90s, Graham was heavily involved in many innovative China-UK partnerships, including the first listing of a Chinese company on the London Stock Exchange and the founding of the Shanghai Cricket Club.

He opened the first foreign investment banking office in China in 1993, in Shanghai for British merchant bank Barings. And he created the British Chamber of Commerce in the same city.

"None of these partnerships have been easy, but that's the way with trying something new," he said.

Working in China opened his eyes to the country's rapid economic transformation. He has a son named Hu Sheng (meaning "born in Shanghai"), and he said the experience of fatherhood instilled in him a longing to contribute toward the lives of young children in China.