The 2017 Block Seminar program, jointly held by Tsinghua university's MiM program and CEMS, was successfully carried out at Tsinghua university from September 11th to 17th, 2017. During the one week’ exchanges and discussions, a total of 27 classmates who come from 17 countries and 17 CEMS alliance colleges have acquired a preliminary understanding to the current situation of the development of China's economy, trends, and cultural characteristics of Chinese enterprises through enterprise visit and experience sharing activities.

Professor CHI Wei, the academic director of MiM program, first gave a warm welcome to students from CEMS alliance colleges all over the world and introduced the development situation of this program as well as the rich and colorful content of the program. Professor HE Ping from the Department of Finance then gave a lecture on the theme of "the Chinese Economy, Banking and Financial System", introducing the development of China from a planned economy to market economy in detail, analyzing the factors for China's rapid economic development, and emphasizing that "entrepreneurial fever" is a new characteristic of the economic growth in China. David, a student from Stockholm School of Economics, Germany, agreed with Professor He’s values of open, self-discipline, free, and self-confidence. David believed that this attitude drives many Chinese companies’ becoming increasingly powerful in recent years.

The students commented on the "Chinese Economy" lecture

Besides lectures and sharing, this program also organized students to visit the enterprise, to let students feel Chinese culture and Chinese entrepreneurship and to help students to understand the status of China's economic development. In five days, the program successively organized students to visit Yizhuang economic development district in Beijing, Kun Ding Group, BOE Company and Xiaomi Company. During the process of talking with the enterprise staff and field experience, students experienced the vitality of China's economic development. In Kun Ding group, students have a preliminary understanding of the development history, main business, corporate culture and latest developments of Kun Ding group through the group's explanation. Later, during the question-and-answer session, the explainer patiently answered questions about the company's development strategy, marketing plan and other details. The visit of Kun Ding group gives the CEMS students a preliminary understanding of the operation and marketing strategies of Chinese investment management companies.

Students are at Kun Ding Company

The students then visited the BOE group. BOE is an Internet of things technology, products and services provider, founded in April 1993, with core services including display devices, smart systems and health services. Through the visit, product experience and question and answer session, CEMS students understand the vision and mission of BOE as well as the management idea, and feel more deeply the present situation of Chinese IT enterprise culture and enterprise development of Chinese IT.

Students visited BOE (Jing Dong Fang) Company

As the last stop, the students came to Xiaomi Company, which has a very rapid development in recent years. Both the product display and q&a session let every student feel the company culture of pursuing quality.

Mate, a student from Bocconi University in Italy, said he was impressed by the Q&A session. When asked "is it very difficult for Xiaomi Company to design an operating system by itself?", the head of Xiaomi Company said that Xiaomi always hopes to make money through service instead of hardware, and Xiaomi is more willing to use an open operating system, so that they can focus more on the development of software service optimization.

A week of lectures and business visits gave CEMS students a lot of insights and thoughts. In the sharing, Oliver, a student from the London School of Economics and Political Science summarized: "if the foreign enterprises want to enter China, they must learn in the local complex environment for development of space. As a foreigner, if you want to work in Chinese company, you have to be both modest and prudent yet flexible."

Students are listening to the lecture in Xiaomi Company

Five days of Block Seminar was over. Time was short, but it made the students from all over the world understand the development of China's economic situation, China's enterprise culture and the spirit, the opportunities and challenges Chinese IT industry faces, the development model and strategy with Chinese characteristics and so on. This short but rich program has laid a good foundation for students’ following study. At the end of the activity, students generally responded that the lectures and visits of enterprises in this series of activities complemented each other and provided a good channel for students to understand China's economic development.

The students visited the Yizhuang economic development district collectively

Article: PAN Sining, WAN Ningning

Editor: Master's program office