Prof. Qian Yingyi Delivers Speech at Closing Ceremony of MBA Orientation

Dear MBA students, ladies and gentlemen,

Good evening.? It's my great pleasure to participate in the Tsinghua MBA orientation ceremony and the banquet. Tsinghua SEM has organized orientations for the last eight consecutive years, and we are the pioneer in China to launch this program. So what is new this year? We have the same high quality students as before, the best among all the applicants. But this year, among a total of 365 students, 40 are from overseas, a record number. In addition, we have 60 exchange students coming from all over the world. In terms of our student body, we are more international and diversified than ever. On our road toward a truly international school, we have just made a “small leap forward.”.

Tomorrow, you will formally start your program at Tsinghua SEM. For the following two or three years, you will have the opportunity to learn from our faculty, your fellow students, and many other distinguished speakers about everything you want to learn on business management in the ever changing world. Studying at Tsinghua will not be easy, and sometimes it will be tough. But this is what you are prepared for, and I'm confident that you will prevail.

Think about it, and you will soon realize how truly lucky you are for being in this place, at this time. China and the Chinese economy are undergoing historic transformation. China's economy is already the fourth largest in the world, after the U.S., Japan, and Germany. China's total foreign trade is the third largest in the world, behind the U.S. and Germany. China has enjoyed the world's second largest foreign direct investment inflow, next only to the U.S. And China's official foreign reserves, approaching $1 trillion US dollars, is the world's largest. By the end of this year, the five-year transition period after China's entry to the WTO will end, and China's economy will become more open and more integrated with the rest of the world.

What do all of those mean to you, and to our School? They mean a lot. We are committed to educating our students -you -to be competitive not only in Chinese firms in China, but also in all firms around the world. We are not only competing with the business schools of our neighbors, but also with the top business schools in Asia, Europe, and North America. That is why we are participating in the accreditation process organized by AACSB; this is why we have been collaborating with MIT Sloan for our international MBA program for 10 years; and this is why we are having overseas exchange students programs with more than 50 schools.

We have no choice but to make our program more international. Mr. Zhu Rongji, the founding dean of Tsinghua SEM and former premier of China, instructed us to teach courses in English. Over the years we found that one of the big obstacles for the Chinese students in many fields, in particular in engineering and management, to excel in the international business world is the lack of English language proficiency.Last year, McKinsey issued a report titled “China's Looming Shortage of Talent..” After surveying many multinational corporations in China, the report listed the lack of English language skills as the number one problem that the multinational firms in China are facing today in hiring new graduates from the universities. Therefore, there is a huge premium for the bilingual graduates on the job market.

This is a year to be remembered. We have, for the first time in our School's history, about one-third of our students in the international MBA program coming from overseas; and more than 10% for the entire MBA program. If we include exchange students, we have about one-quarter of the students from overseas. So our student body has become much more international than before.

So does our faculty. Ten new faculty members will join Tsinghua SEM for the coming academic year, all of them have earned their Ph.D.s from overseas research universities, including Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan, Wisconsin, and NYU. They are bringing in frontier research ideas and global experiences to our School. We will all benefit from them.

For those who are not fluent in English yet, I have this to say: seize this opportunity at Tsinghua, and try seriously to make English one of your working languages. You will not regret; and this can well be the best investment you ever made in your life.

I graduated from this university 25 years ago, and left for the U.S. for my graduate studies. I was among the first Tsinghua graduates after the Cultural Revolution to study abroad. At that time, China just opened up its economy and society. The very place we are standing on was part of Sijiqing People's Commune, which grew vegetables for Beijing residents. As a high student, I spent some time in this Commune for helping harvest, as required by the school. In 25 years, China and the world changed a lot. For the next 25 years, China will change even more, so will the world. You will make a difference for China and for the world. It is the challenge you can't afford to avoid.