Because people along the route had realized that there was demand and quickly organized supply. That's so Chinese. In a well-organized country like Germany, such a problem may not have arisen in the first place, but in China people immediately recognized an opportunity.

Isolation means a lack of growth. I grew up in China at a time when the country was completely isolated. That era is over.

Growth will be slower, no one denies that. But the question is: Where are the chances and opportunities now? I see some positive and some negative trends.

I firmly believe that digitalization has only just begun in China. In addition to the taxi, transport, shopping and hotel businesses, many other industries will follow: education, health care, administration, even the legal branch - everything, really. There is still a lot of opportunity in China for the inventive and ambitious ones.

Country [China] needs to continue opening up and keep connecting. It needs to realize that the world has become one. The old concept of isolation, the idea that you can solve your problems on your own does not work anymore - neither in cultural, economic, nor political terms.

Our company has only been active in Beijing and Shanghai, two very market-dominated cities. This was an advantage. Land is purchased here in public auctions, in a transparent way. When you do real estate development outside Beijing and Shanghai it is good to have "guanxi" - good relations within the local government.

On the one hand the world is getting more integrated and we should not dismiss social values as "Western" when they are actually modern values. On the other hand, individual countries have their own history and their own evolution. Trade unions, for example, don't play the same role in China as they do in Europe or the US.