China’s business schools embrace the state agenda
At Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, in Beijing, first-year domestic MBA students began a new mandatory course this month: Socialism Theory and Practice with Chinese Characteristics in the Xi Jinping New Era, featuring the paramount leader’s ruling ideology.
“You may see this as a constraint as some non-business elements are added to the curriculum,” says Liu Qiao, dean of Guanghua. “But, from another perspective, the course addresses many of the same environmental, social, and governance topics western business schools are teaching.”
“We emphasise the Communist party’s leadership because it cares about these issues,” adds Liu.
But this growing embrace of the state’s agenda by China’s top business schools raises the question of how they plan to expand their global influence. The issue is complicated by Beijing’s stringent zero-Covid policy, which has curbed international travel to and from China even as most countries have reopened borders.
At Guanghua, international students will also sit a mandatory course, called “Lecture series on contemporary China”, which aims to introduce, if not promote, the country’s political and economic policies.
“The pandemic has had a big impact on us,” explains Bai of Tsinghua SEM, adding that some students had been unable to fulfil overseas exchange programmes and international students had struggled to obtain visas to enter China.
Despite these challenges, Guanghua’s Liu says he expects foreign citizens to account for a fifth of students by 2027, provided the zero-Covid policy is no longer in place. The ratio now stands at 10 per cent.
At Fudan SoM, Lu is less ambitious about recruiting more international students than he is about promoting the use of English in business education, where China still lags behind the west “in many areas”.
“I interview faculty candidates in English,” says Lu, who does not have an overseas degree. “You can’t teach at Fudan SoM if your English is worse than mine.”
This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Sun Yu
