For economist, signs all point to solutions

British economist Jim O'Neill was cycling in a remote village in southern China in late 2009 when he spotted a large poster on a dilapidated wall that stopped him in his tracks.

He was on a business trip but had decided to spend some leisure time with his wife visiting the karst mountains beside the Yulong River in Yangshuo, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

"We cycled around some villages, and outside one we saw this massive billboard which said, in English, 'Success in English, success in life'. I took a photograph of it," he said, recalling the incident in a recent interview.