My life: Richard McGregor

NEWS JUNKY I grew up in a beautiful part of Sydney, Australia, on the harbour and next to the beach, surrounded by bush land. I couldn't afford to live there these days but back then I always wanted to leave. I think I was always destined to be a journalist; I grew up obsessed with news and sport. I used to wait to grab the newspaper from my father as soon as it came through the front door.

From the time I became a journalist, I plotted to work in Asia. Going to London or New York and landing a job has long been a well-trodden Antipodean path, but to me Asia always mattered more; it's a place being invented before your eyes. I remember vividly my first impression of Asia, disembarking from a plane at [Singapore's] Changi Airport long before air-conditioned terminals and being swamped by the intoxicating mix of aircraft diesel fuel and heavy humidity.

GETTING THERE I first went to China in 1987 and that trip was enough to persuade me to return, but it took a while to realise my ambition. I went to Taiwan to work and study but instead of getting a job in China, I was sent to Japan and then Hong Kong before arriving in Beijing in 1998. Yet after striving for years to get to China's capital, I didn't stay long. I blame Hunan [province's] capital, Changsha, for that. Homesick after eight years away and with the offer of a job at home, I made up my mind to return to Australia during an assignment in a freezing Changsha hotel room on a miserable winter's day.

After a two-year stint in Canberra, I returned to Shanghai [to work for] the Financial Times, in 2000. Although I covered the economy and business, anyone who wants to make sense of China has to approach the story with a patient political mindset. Just doing the numbers is never enough.

CHAMBERS OF SECRETS Many people seem strangely naive or wilfully blind to the importance of politics in China. Most struggle to grasp that the ruling [Communist Party] is separate to the government, a living and breathing entity unto itself. It is not hard to understand why outsiders struggle with the party; it does not welcome scrutiny from outsiders of any ilk, local or foreign. Like communist parties throughout history, [China's] is secretive by habit and instinct.

I am sure many readers of the South China Morning Post have experienced the perennial 'if-only-the-rest-of-the-world-understood-China-better' conversation, in which a Chinese official laments how the world would be instantly set to rights once outsiders grasped how the Middle Kingdom works. The truth is the party strives to make the political system as opaque and impenetrable as possible. They might want you to understand China better, but only as they present it to you. They certainly don't want you to know what is going on inside the party.