When Mao Daqing was growing up in Beijing in the 1970s, his grandfather, a nationally celebrated architect, would take him to see the sites he had designed, such as the Great Hall of the People, the meeting place of the Communist government in Tiananmen Square.

Mao Ziyao taught his grandson to appreciate art and to draw, and his attention and enthusiasm had a profound effect on the young boy.

“I studied architecture,” Mr Mao says, sitting in the Beijing basement where he founded his company UrWork, now the biggest co-working chain in China. The road to UrWork’s headquarters in the central business district is flanked by skyscrapers, with cranes helping to put up yet more, a far cry from the early Communist era architecture Mr Mao appreciated as a child.