Harvard Renews Tsinghua Contract

The Harvard Kennedy School has renewed an agreement with a Chinese university to train Chinese government officials in management skills at Harvard, the latest step in the University’s efforts to establish a foothold in China.

Under the agreement with Tsinghua University’s School of Public Policy and Management, Chinese officials spend six weeks in the U.S. and four at the Kennedy School. The original program was created in 2002, the same year China joined the World Trade Organization.

In addition to the renewed agreement, several other programs will continue to bring senior Chinese officials to the U.S. for a semester, according to Kennedy School professor Anthony Saich, who has been instrumental in setting up the Kennedy School’s program. The School of Public Health has two major programs to train officials and hospital administrators, he said.

“All these programs build gradually,” Saich said. “One thing that’s clearly happened since we started the program is other parts of China have been asking to be included.”

Lan Xue, a dean at Tsinghua, said the roots of the program date back as far as 1995. That year, officials from Jiangsu province came to American universities for management training.

In the first five years of the agreement with Harvard, Xue said the program has become a leading example for American programs working with Chinese officials.

“The program has become probably the best known to the [Chinese] government,” Xue said. “This one is known to the best. It has a very good reputation.”

Much of the agreement’s success, according to Xue, is due to longstanding professional ties between Saich and Lu Mai, the secretary-general of the China Development Research Foundation, which is the third major participant in the exchange.

Despite the increasing ties at Harvard’s professional schools, student organizations with programs in China said they hope that University initiatives continue to expand because Harvard has a long way to go to establish a strong presence in China.

“I think given China’s increasing importance today and in the future, increasing exchange is essential,” said Ilyes Kamoun ’10, a director of Harvard Summit for Young Leaders in China (HSYLC).

Hong Liu ’09, one of the executive co-chairs of the Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations, said, “Harvard’s presence [in China] isn’t nearly as strong as it could be.”

“Yale is maybe doing a better job,” he added.

Both Hong and Saich expressed hope that University President Drew G. Faust’s visit to China later this month would give impetus to a stronger Harvard presence in China.

Xue said that increased exchange with American universities like Harvard is integral to China’s development.

“Many leaders in many areas will be trained from Harvard, and we have so many issues and so many problems that have to be addressed by collaboration,” Xue said. “Without the collaboration and understanding between those two countries, many of these problems won’t be solved.”

Xue said that he hoped that in the future the flow of people will go both ways, with Americans from both the government and the private sector travelling to China for education programs as well.

Though Saich said it was “unlikely” American officials would soon go to China for training, Xue offered his university’s hospitality if they ever go.

“Tsinghua would be happy to be the host of that exchange activity,” Xue said.