Q & A: 2017 'Honorable citizen' recipients

What do you feel is China's biggest achievement in the past five years? What's the most notable change you've observed?

David Preston: I think it is not one or two things, there are a number of really big achievements. It's the transformation of the economy, from the sort of supplier based industrial type of economy to a more innovative economy. I think this is one of the big changes.

I would also like to say that, especially against the light of our industry, being in the human pharma industry and animal health industry, there's been a significant upgrade and improvement on regulatory, environment, safety and guidelines on food and environmental standards. We can see that the water we drink is much better than before; the food we eat is safer than before; we can see the greening of the city, the focus on polluting industries, the reduction of pollution in the country has been dramatically addressed by the Party in all cities in China.