The last three decades have brought visible changes in every aspect of Chinese life. Andrey Denisov, Russia’s first deputy foreign minister, former minister-counselor of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in the People’s Republic of China, and Russian ambassador to the United Nations, has spent years inside and outside China studying the country’s astonishing ascent. “I entered the economics department of university and began to learn Chinese in 1969. It was the worst year in the whole history of relations between the two countries,” Denisov recalled in a recent interview. “Thus, if anyone told me at that moment what China would become 40 years later, and that I would experience it with my own eyes, I would have refused to believe them.”

In this excerpt from an interview conducted by McKinsey’s Yermolai Solzhenitsyn, Denisov discusses China’s socioeconomic reforms and potential lessons for Russia....