Two-year sabbatical

In 1997, FlorCruz returned to Hong Kong to witness the handover ceremony as the territory was returned to China by Britain.

Two years later, he took a year-long sabbatical from journalism when he was named an Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Toward the end of this period, CNN offered him a job as Beijing correspondent and bureau chief.

"I was happy to accept, because China was a familiar beat and reporting for television offered a new challenge," he said.

During the next 13 years, one of the outstanding stories for him was sports diplomacy－the way in which sports have played a distinct role in building bridges to link China with the rest of the world.

FlorCruz covered the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and also interviewed basketball star Yao Ming live on television after the Houston Rockets selected the giant athlete as the first overall pick in the 2002 NBA draft.

However, FlorCruz observed that the road to reform was not always smooth. He recalled that in the early 1980s, Deng Xiaoping argued that when you open the windows, flies and mosquitoes are bound to come in, along with fresh air, but there is nothing to worry about.