'Historic event'

"We felt we had participated in a historic event from which we could all draw immense satisfaction," wrote Jack Perry Sr in his memoir.

The trip paved the way for another trade mission with 48 businessmen from British companies the year after, which later became known as the 48 Group.

"The need for joint consultations and collective discussions with the Chinese gave birth to the formation of the '48 Group' of British traders with China. From its very inception, its philosophy and objectives were nonideological," wrote Perry in the foreword to the book The 48 Group: The Story of the Icebreakers in China.

"It concentrated on one single-minded purpose, to develop and extend Britain's trade with the new China, from which all companies would benefit commercially," he added.

And Jack Perry Sr was right. In the next seven decades, the China-UK trade volume kept growing to an annual total of more than $100 billion in recent years, and the two-way stock investment reached nearly $50 billion.

Last year, President Xi Jinping congratulated the event commemorating the 70th anniversary of the trailblazing "Icebreaking Mission" in the China-UK trade.

In his congratulatory letter, Xi pointed out that 70 years ago, British entrepreneurs represented by Jack Perry Sr, keenly seeing the bright future of the People's Republic of China and the huge potential of China-UK cooperation, broke the ice of ideology with courage, and took the lead in opening up the channel for China-UK trade exchanges.

Xi commended the generations of "icebreakers", who have witnessed and actively participated in China's development and reform over the past seven decades and achieved their own development and growth through mutually beneficial cooperation.

Jack Perry Sr's decision to continue engaging with China after the first trade deal hugely influenced his son Stephen, who was only five during the 1953 icebreaking trip. Stephen started to work for his father when he was still in college.

"The days after the founding of the People's Republic of China were marked by a resistance in the West to accepting it. Those who believed in trade and interdependence, like my father, were in a minority in the West," Stephen said.

" (My) father's conviction was that solid business relations create peace," he added.