"Since you are here, why not visit the house of Adam Smith?" said Peter Burnett, CEO of the China-Britain Business Council, during an interview with me on the sidelines of a business event held in Edinburgh earlier this month.

It was a road show for the China International Supply Chain Expo, which will be held in Beijing in June, and Burnett had just given a keynote speech, citing Smith for his idea of the market as the "invisible hand" that stabilizes prices and matches demand with supply.

"He was a philosopher and an economist who established the benefits of free and fair trade. So he hated protectionism and tariffs. He didn't think that they were the right thing to do," said Burnett.

Of course, I know Smith, the father of economics, whom I learned about in high school. But I forgot he was born and raised in Scotland, around 300 years ago. How exciting it would be to "meet" him in the city where he lived, worked, and died.

The next day, it was windy and raining outside. Edinburgh's weather is notoriously unpredictable in spring, and locals joke that one can experience all four seasons in a single day. Just as Smith might have experienced, I thought, as I stepped out in the drizzle.

Walking down the Royal Mile, the cobbled street in the Old Town, I found the statue of Smith, located in an ancient marketplace looking downhill toward the harbor and over the sea to the nearby county of Fife, where he was born.

The location of the statue in the middle of the tourist street lined with shops could hardly be more appropriate. It was in the market that he observed the bargaining and haggling to understand how society functioned and traded with one another's comparative advantages.

Further down the street, I visited the Canongate Kirkyard, where the grave of Smith lies. The grave is fenced, and the inscription on the gravestone reads: Here are deposited the remains of Adam Smith, author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations.

Not far from the grave, I found the Panmure House, a 17th-century townhouse which is the only surviving residence of Smith, who spent his last 12 years there, during which he revised and completed the final editions of his masterpieces. Smith died in 1790.

The tour prompted me to revisit Smith's influential legacy for thoughts: In The Wealth of Nations, he argued that countries prosper on the division of labor and free trade, and in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, he proposed that human morality arises from our capacity for sympathy, and to judge our behavior through conscience within us.

Later, during my four-hour train ride back to London, I glanced through a biography of Smith by Jesse Norman, a member of the British Parliament and also an author. The Smith who emerges from the book was not only the first thinker to place markets at the heart of economics but also a pioneering theorist of moral philosophy, culture, and society.

Smith's arguments resonate today even more so. What would Smith say about the current tariff wars that the United States started around the globe? In modern terms, he would likely say that although tariffs protect certain industries, they reduce competition and increase costs for the broader economy.

"He certainly would be angered by a global retreat from trade and the raising of tariffs and nontariff barriers. That's absolutely contrary to Smithian economics," said Norman in an interview with Economics Observatory.

The representatives of Scottish companies I spoke to during the road show also noted that working with Chinese partners can strengthen their capacity to develop better products, while Chinese firms told me they need British expertise to approach clients in Europe.

I specifically asked whether they had concerns about supply-chain security and intellectual property when dealing with Chinese partners — topics so often hyped up by Western media and think tanks.

Their answers were refreshingly candid and to the point. One said there is always a risk involved in any collaboration, regardless of the partner, but that their experience working with the Chinese companies had been smooth. Another remarked that if a technology can be taken away so easily, then it was probably not much of an advantage in the first place.

More than two centuries on, the market theory that Smith first proposed has become "common sense" for businesspeople, yet it poses an uncomfortable question to some politicians: whether nations will choose cooperation over confrontation, and openness over protectionism.

Perhaps they, too, should revisit Smith, refresh the basic economic lessons, and test their moral conscience, for their choices will shape not only the prosperity of individual nations, but also that of the world.

The author is a correspondent at China Daily Europe based in London.

Contact the writer at xingyi@chinadaily.com.cn.