Liu Qingquan, a students of the Tsinghua University's 2006 EMBA Autumn Class, who is also Board Chairman of the well-known Wondersun Dairy Company, said, "We need to know more about how the elite businessmen in China operate and manage their companies."

Di added, "Learning from others is good, but what we borrow may be far from the real situation in China because China is undergoing a transitional economic stage in which many problems are unique to the country. Therefore we are encouraging our teachers to study native cases in China and look into the cases of companies run by the students to get experiences out of them."

"Gradually our teachers can strike a balance between borrowing foreign experiences and China's reality," Di said, adding that business schools and their EMBA programs will gradually create their own characteristics as a result of mixing foreign ideas and the domestic wisdom.

In America, most students of EMBA projects are mid-level managers while in China most students are company leaders and decision makers. "Different from the needs of the mid-level managers, China's EMBA students care more about strategy. In this light, our courses are designed to be more focused on improving leadership and decision-making capability," said Di. "We are aiming at cultivating leaders and shaping the future of Chinese enterprises."

Di also mentioned the "mobile school" that takes class to the companies. "Students come from all over the country with different backgrounds and most of them are domestic business leaders, so studying themselves is a typical business management case," he explained.

"Everyone in the class is an elite in his own field, from whom I can learn a lot," one student said. He was enrolled in the EMBA project for two reasons: to sort out his thinking; and to expand his social and business network.

Though some EMBA students may disclose their company's business secrets inadvertently in class or are totally unaware that their competitors are sitting quite close, "the classmate relationship is innocent--we trust each other and cooperation overcomes competition in class," according to another student.

"In the company, few employees will point out your mistakes, but here in class, you are no longer the boss and different opinions can benefit you a lot," said Zhang Zhifeng, Board Chairman of NE Tiger, and an EMBA graduate from Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, whose company produces luxury clothes.

"In some sense, your classmates are much more like a mirror to you, " Zhou Changyan, Board Chairman of Beijing Friend Chemical Company, and a student of Tsinghua EMBA added.

International Cooperation

Chinese courses have been cooperating with their American counterparts since the establishment of EMBA in China. As one of the earliest schools to study the science of business management, Tsinghua University has co-organized lessons with Massachusetts Institute Of Technology (MIT) and Harvard Business School. This June 8, Tsinghua will join with the internationally acclaimed INSEAD, founded in 1957 and is considered one of the world's leading business schools, to cut a ribbon at the opening ceremony of a new EMBA program.

It will be the first EMBA in which China and a foreign country operate the program equally, from teaching staff to course setup. Students will be enrolled globally and taught in English. The program will have four classrooms in Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore and Fontainebleau. On completing the course students will be awarded an MBA degree recognized by both schools.

According to Frank Brown, Dean of INSEAD, such an unprecedented EMBA operational mode will offer students channels for mutual communication. In today's global business environment, the program will enable China's future business leaders to gain a better understanding of their counterparts.

"It's an important measure for China's EMBA to step outside the border," said Di. "Now we need a platform to promote our own EMBA brands."