During a visit to Shanghia's Pudong district, former US president George Bush attended a lecture of Zhao's on the development of Pudong. Bush said US Secretary of State Colin Powell once also used a laser pointer to direct the Afghanistan war.

Zhao quickly replied that the difference lay in that the places Powell pointed at would be reduced to debris, but Zhao's would see tall buildings rise. Bush's reply is unrecorded.

Despite such verbal jousts, Zhao thinks the best way to persuade others is talking in a reasonable and friendly way.

His own political stardom started in the 1980s with high posts in Shanghai. Zhao's other works includes Riverside Talks: A Friendly

Dialogue Between and Atheist and a Christian and The China Model: A Dialogue Between East and West, some of which have been translated into other languages.

Book tag: Public Diplomacy and Cross-cultural Communication, by Zhao Qizheng, 222 pp, China Renmin University Press, 2011, 38 yuan ($5.84)