Top class

Few schools - business or otherwise - with a short history quickly climb to the world's top. But for Xiang Bing, the founder of Chueng Kong Graduate School of Business, ranking with Harvard, Wharton, and Stanford business schools is not a long-term dream - but a goal that he dreams of achieving in the next four years.

"We have a 10-year plan and everything is on track," says Xiang, the former professor at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management.

Established in 2002 and funded by Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing, Xiang's goal is to build a Top 10 business school in China within 10 years.

With the country's robust economy, a group of the world's top professors and high-end investment, Xiang believes his dream is realistic.

"Most of the world's top business schools are familiar with the US market, advanced economy and modern enterprises. But few of them have an equal understanding of the Chinese market, emerging economy and State-owned enterprises," says Xiang. "I think that is where our opportunities are.

"I'm quite aware that we can't reach our goal simply by copying the existing model of the current world top business schools. So we have adopted a shake-up pattern," he adds.

For Xiang, the "shake-up" began with recruiting the school's initial faculty. Unlike other Chinese business schools, which often depend on domestic professors, Xiang started recruiting teachers in 2002 directly from top international business schools, a move that he describes as "starting at the highest level."

"Most of our first professors are from the world's top business schools. I know that if my goal is to build a world-class business school I need a world-class faculty," Xiang says.

"But as new business school, we can't afford to offer higher salaries to attract professors. So basically we managed to attract our first professors by patriotism."

The first seven of the professors were Chinese, which Xiang attributes to patriotism and devotion to building a world-class Chinese business school.

"As Chinese, they are more willing to join us," Xiang says. "And as long as we managed to attract the first seven professors, it become easier for me hire more top scholars including many foreign ones, because top professors always want to work with their peers," Xiang says.

Establishing an academic environment that could continue attracting talented staff and students was also equally important, says Xiang.

In China, the dean of a college or university historically is also a powerful government official. This arrangement has been criticized as impairing school governance and faculty hiring and is also one of the sources of China's overly rigid education system.

Xiang says as dean he countered the system by establishing a seven-person committee responsible for school governance and faculty recruitment.

"Although I am the dean, I don't have the right to hire anyone unless most of people in the committee agree," Xiang says.

Alumni network

Establishing an elite alumni network is another goal on Xiang's roadmap, Since it opened its first campus in the Oriental Plaza in Beijing near Tiananmen Square, Chueng Kong Graduate School of Business has had about 2,000 graduates, including 1,800 graduated from the EMBA program and 200 from the MBA program.

Graduates include many of the top Chinese entrepreneurs such as Alibaba's president Jack Ma, Focus Media's president Jason Jiang and UTStarcom's former CEO Wu Ying.

"For any business school, a high-end alumni network is paramount," Xiang says. "We have managed to set up one in a short time because of our focus on EMBA program. "

According to Xiang, Chueng Kong Graduate School of Business's EMBA program is one of the most expensive programs in China. It began in November 2002, a year earlier than the school's MBA program.

"By 2005, about 85 percent of our EMBA students were company presidents or chief executives," Xiang says. "That helped us to set up our elite alumni network in our first three plans."

Xiang says his next four year plan is to expand the influence and research areas of Chueng Kong Graduate School of Business into the pan-Asia market. After that, the school is looking for merger and acquisition opportunities with top business schools in the United States or Europe and to become a top 10 business school in the world before 2012.

"In order to reach that goal, we need to expand our faculty team from the current 25 to about 50," Xiang says. "When that is done, I think I will quit the school and work for charity. But before that, I want to say: beware, I'm coming!"

(China Daily 03/03/2008 page7)