Some 20 years ago, many upwardly mobile young men at China’s elite universities became members of the Communist Party. It was the thing to do, and Xiao Zhixing was no exception.
Today, Xiao is Associate Professor of Management at the China-Europe International Business School (Shanghai), with a PhD (2004) from INSEAD in Organisational Behaviour. In-between, the academic learned how to spot oxymorons, conundrums and dichotomies. And he’s found plenty of them in his native land.
Although one of the largest economies in the world, China “is still – in many senses – managed by the political system of another era,” he says. “On the one hand, you have this superficial market mechanism … but, on the other hand, the Party is a father figure, the decision-maker for almost all important issues in China.”
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This project and its funding methods appear outside the norm for Chinese education. “Business education is a monopoly. The Ministry of Education basically has so far given out only two licences for EMBA education outside of the old state university system: one to us and another to a school in Beijing. That is an important reason why we were able to grow very quickly.”