The Revival of Management Education in Reform-Era China

This chapter analyzes the revival of management education in mainland China as a key aspect of the Reform Era. Reacting against the ideological excesses of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese officials and academics first worked to restore “science” to the study and practice of management by re-training tens of thousands of mid-level managers across the CCP and state-owned enterprises. These efforts relied on transnational circulations of knowledge back and forth with the major capitalist economies of Europe and North America, which in turn required careful ideological re-calibrations and justifications. By the early 1990s, these processes evolved into leading universities such as Tsinghua and Fudan establishing American-style MBA programs in partnership with MIT Sloan. Through high-level academic exchanges largely funded by Hong Kong MIT alumni, this partnership transplanted whole courses, textbooks, and methodologies into Chinese management education and further accelerated China’s export-driven integration with global capitalism.