The school held a consultation meeting Saturday at the school in Beijing's most popular shopping center, Wangfujing. The school itself is located within a huge compound of malls and office buildings developed by Li Ka-shing's company.

Covering 6,000 square meters, the non-profit school boasts world-class facilities and offers high research funds for invited professors, in an effort to recruit experienced scholars who have worked with world leading business institutions such as the Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania and the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Despite its exorbitant tuition of 250,000 yuan (US$30,000) for a two-year period of study, the number of people applying for entrance was triple that which the school could admit, the school's director said.

Its first EMBA class for executives was launched last November with 105 students, 90 percent of whom were top leaders from state-owned, private or transnational enterprises.

For face-to-face exchanges with world business leaders, the EMBA program will invite high-profile lecturers like the school's founder Li Ka-shing, chairman of China's computer giant Legend Group Liu Chuanzhi, and even the world's richest people, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.

The school, moreover, will manage to establish a documentary database featuring cases of successful Chinese enterprises as well as a research center on Chinese enterprises, both will receive one million US dollars annually in the first three years and two million US dollars starting the fourth year, according to the director.

The Ministry of Education-authorized school aims to be a leader in Asia in five years and one of the best globally in 10 years, the director said

(Xinhua News Agency March 16, 2003)