This paper discusses the development of new models of business education in contemporary China. It describes the rise of the Masters of Business Administration (MBA) degree in the context of the growth of a new professional-managerial class in China, as a corollary of modernisation and economic reform. While the Masters of Business Administration (MBA) has its origins in the United States, it has grown into a globally recognized qualification for business status, particularly when acquired from ‘elite’ institutions in a highly competitive and extensively ranked global system. Its growth in Asia is reflective of the significant shortages of managerial expertise as economic success throws traditional family-based or state capitalist models of business organization into question. In China, the rise of the MBA has been more recent, although the original idea was introduced in the late 1970s, not long after the directive of Deng Xiaoping to modernise the economy. We consider the role played by new MBA programs, such as the Executive MBA (EMBA) and the International MBA (IMBA) as new educational products designed, not so much for the re-engineering of management practices in SOEs along more effective commercial lines, but rather upon developing an internationally networked business elite better able to engage with the new challenges of the global knowledge economy
