Today finds me in a very hot and steamy Beijing where the temperature has reached 32 degrees, with smog threatening. But this city seems to have brushed it off. It’s an exciting place to be.

Last night saw a brilliant performance by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra to a very grateful and respectful audience as Sir Andrew Davis, one of the top 10 conductors in the world, took the orchestra through the works of Vine, Bruch and Tchaikovsky. The audience enthusiastically demanded two encores before we all went on to a grand reception. This country really knows how to entertain people.

Business is banqueting, and banqueting is business in China. Tonight’s banquet, I’m told will be no less than eight courses starting at 6pm and finishing at 7pm. Charlie’s quick mind works out that’s a course every seven minutes. I dare not ask for the vegetarian option for fear of having the same dish eight times over, as happened to a leading Australian educationist recently. I am also advised that there will be two speeches and six toasts of a fiery drink called Baijiu, the most consumed distilled spirit in the world.

This is a very organised place and as we arrived, the news broke that the Chinese government is planning to scrap control on families completely, having imposed the one child policy in 1979 and revised it in 2015 to allow a second child. Perhaps it is recognition that the modern Chinese woman cannot be controlled this way any more.

But it also reflects a concern about the future of the country’s demographic spread. The Chinese government has no expectation that the country’s fertility rate will reach replacement in the near future. China has 16 per cent of its population aged over 60 compared with Australia’s 21 per cent and it is set to continue to age dramatically just like Japan which now has 33 per cent of its people over 60. An ageing country is ultimately a shrinking country.