program in China, offered jointly with Tsinghua University, of Beijing.

"The Chinese believe very strongly that China is unique and therefore they should learn something on China in China," Hellmut Schütte, the dean of the Singapore campus, said in an interview.

"That is understandable," he continued. "American business schools are dominating the field with their way of business thinking, which is all very interesting but is not always applicable back in China's state-owned enterprises. But at the same time, students appreciate they need to learn about global practice. This is why many local schools are now offering joint programs with international business schools. Students can get the best of both worlds."

The program may make life easier for Steve Mullinjer, a recruiter in Shanghai for Heidrick & Struggles, an international executive search firm based in Chicago.

"Foreign-trained executives that can prove they can adapt their learned skill sets to the local market are in rare supply,

MBA-holders with international exposure are increasingly in demand in China, a country that has created plenty of successful, self-taught entrepreneurs, but few with much experience of Western-style best-management practices.

As Chinese companies face increasing international competition in their own backyard, while simultaneously taking on the outside world, the limitations of their senior executives' understanding of Western practices can often weigh them down.

A few years ago, many Chinese executives would have jumped at the opportunity to study abroad, but now they are hesitant to leave, for fear that they will not only lose touch with the country's fast evolving economic realities, but also lose precious business contacts and networks.

The management consulting firm McKinsey estimates that Chinese companies, given the global aspirations that many nurture, will need 75,000 leaders who can work effectively in global environments over the next 10 to 15 years, compared with the 3,000 to 5,000 that they have now.

"When you add on top of that the hiring needs of multinationals doing business in China, you can imagine the vast demand for executive talent in the country," said Jevan Soo, McKinsey's manager of Asia-Pacific recruiting, in Shanghai.

In the short-term, companies are coping through a variety of mechanisms, including continuing to bring both Chinese and non-Chinese expatriates from overseas, and developing local hires from entry-level positions to managerial roles.

"However, the long-term solution will require a shift in the Chinese education system to increasingly emphasize the practical skills and the English language skills that global companies require," Soo said.

Foreign universities have been quick to pick up on the trend, and in the last couple of years joint-executive education programs have flourished.

Insead's intended partner in its executive MBA program, Tsinghua, one of the top Chinese universities, already offers an international MBA program in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management. Graduates of the program earn a Tsinghua MBA and a Sloan certificate.

But, Schütte said, the Insead-Tsinghua qualification would be the first dual-degree executive MBA offered by top international and Chinese business schools in China.

Qian Xiaojun, director of the MBA program at Tsinghua, said in an e-mail: "We are waiting for the approval of the Chinese Ministry of Education and are planning to start the new EMBA in the fall." The Insead-Tsinghua dual-degree may be the first in China, but is unlikely to be the last. In March, the dean of Columbia Business School will travel to China to meet with educators, executives and government officials and look at opportunities.

Even though Columbia is not yet offering a joint executive MBA it has been increasing its Chinese presence and is about to launch an executive education program in Hong Kong, focused on real estate. This month, the China Europe International Business School, Ceibs, in Shanghai, is starting to offer a new executive education course called the Global CEO program, in conjunction with Harvard Business School and IESE Business School in Spain.

The program, scheduled for one week each month over a four-month period, will rotate between Shanghai, Boston and Barcelona, and has been designed to strengthen the management skills of Chinese chief executives with more than 10 years' experience in senior management.

Such programs do not come cheap, particularly in Chinese earning terms. The Global CEO course at Ceibs costs $43,500, and executive MBA programs in China average upward of $40,000, a fortune by local standards.
Tsinghua program could top $100,000.

But the returns on investment make the programs attractive.

While CEIBS charges $35,000 for its executive MBA program, alumni can expect to be earning double that amount within three years.

For chief executives who make multimillion-dollar decisions, if learning helps them to improve the performance of their companies by a mere 0.1 percent "that will be more than enough to pay their tuition," said Rolf Cremer, the dean and vice-president of Ceibs.

If the rising popularity of MBA courses in China is creating international growth opportunities for business schools around the world, it is also posing challenges for some of them back home.

"We have definitely seen a decreasing number of applications from China within the last couple of years, maybe something like 20 percent," said Hooi Den Huan, the Vice Dean of Nanyang Business School at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Applications from China alone still outnumber the total annual enrollment of 125 students, but Nanyang recognizes that it has to position its programs clearly to stay attractive as Chinese business schools ramp up their quality and reputation, Hooi said.

Nanyang is not alone in facing this challenge.

"Most multinational firms are still hiring in relatively small numbers at Chinese MBA schools as compared to their hiring levels at U.S. and European MBA schools," Soo, of McKinsey, said. "However, it is only a matter of time before Chinese schools close this gap."