The International University Consortium for Executive Education (UNICON)'s directors' conference for 2011 took place at Tsinghua SEM during April 13-15.

UNICON is an association of world’s leading business schools with a commitment to management, executive education and development. Initiated in 1972 and now highly influential in the executive education arena, it has 96 member schools around the globe. Its three member schools on the Chinese mainland are Tsinghua SEM, China-Europe International Business School and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business.

Once every two years, UNICON has its directors’ conference held outside the U.S., and the conference at SEM is the second UNICON conference held in China since ten years ago.

This year’s conference, themed “East Meets West: Develop Local Talents with Global Perspective,” has attracted 70 attendees from 15 countries.

Tsinghua University Vice President XIE Weihe giving opening speech

Opening Ceremony

An opening ceremony of the annual conference took place at Wenjin International Hotel on the morning of April 13, 2011.

At the ceremony, Vice President of Tsinghua University XIE Weihe and Senior Associate Dean of SEM YANG Bin each delivered a welcome address. XIE Weihe wished the conference would provide a platform where attendees can exchange ideas and identify critical issues in China’s economic development, while YANG Bin celebrated the diversity among participants and encouraged them to turn diversity into strength.

An opening speech was then given by ZHANG Xinsheng, President of China Education Association for International Exchange. He said the conference took place with perfect timing, for Tsinghua’s centenary anniversary will be celebrated in late April, and the word “internationalization” has recently been officially adopted by the government which marks a milestone in the educational development of China.

Then ZHANG Xinsheng identifies several driving factors for the fundamental changes happening around the world, and named three implications for management education: business schools should pay more attention to entrepreneurship and ethics education, and cater for local companies’ need to go abroad, changing faculty composition, curriculum and case selection to acquit them with socio-cultural situations in the target country.

UNICON Board Chairman Patrick Cataldo giving welcome speech

Keynote Speaker LI Daokui: China Can Sustain Growth

Coming after the opening ceremony was a keynote speech given by Professor LI Daokui of SEM. He opened his speech with a well-supported prediction that China will be able to sustain a high economic growth rate in the next one or even two decades, and raised “urbanization,” “infrastructure building,” as well as “private consumption growth” as potential drivers for economic boom.

According to LI Daokui, in future economic arena, the world can expect to see China replace its trade surplus gradually with a vibrant domestic economy. Chinese enterprises will invest abroad at an increasing pace. Moreover, the service sector will grow to stand a reasonable share. An echo to the suggestion of ZHANG Xinsheng, he suggested foreign guests to “play up comparative advantages” by teaching Chinese entrepreneurs “what natives take for granted,” namely c ultural and business practice conventions in foreign countries.

Guests of the conference

Other Activities

In the three-day event, there were also other activities, including a CEO panel on “Develop Local Talents with Global Perspective,” another keynote speech by Professor YANG Baiyin from SEM on “East Meets West: Embracing Holistic Learning in Executive Education,” as well as a Deans’ panel that discussed executive education in the new century.

On top of the scheduled activities, participants also had free breakout discussions on the theme of this year’s conference.

As a last part of the event, Professor XUE Lei of SEM exchanged gifts with guests from UNICON.

The gift exchanging ceremony