Key players in McGill's Canada-China Financial Services Development Project: Professor Alex Whitmore, Sylvain St-Amand and Dean of Management Wallace Crowston.

PHOTO: OWEN EGAN

Supplying capitalist know-how to communist China

DANIEL McCABE | Sylvain St-Amand remembers the first time he arrived in China back in 1986. He was a student on a research grant, embarking on a year-long stay in Shanghai.

"There was one building in all of Shanghai that was bigger than 12 storeys. It really stood out. Today, there are something like 2,000 buildings in the city that are just as large or bigger.

"The changes over the past decade have been just amazing," says St-Amand, the director of the Faculty of Management's Centre for International Management Studies. "There are shopping malls now -- that was once unheard of. Young people have careers that they more or less control. People can buy cars. When I first went to China, buying a bicycle was often next to impossible."

China is undergoing a tricky metamorphosis of gigantic proportions -- experimenting with aspects of a market-driven economy and increasing its involvement in the global marketplace, while still holding tight to its socialist orientation and strict centralized system of government. Enough liberalization to generate new wealth, but not enough to threaten the powers that be.

It's a fascinating tightrope act and one which St-Amand and other members of the Faculty of Management are getting to see up close. The faculty's Centre for International Management Studies is spearheading an award-winning program aimed at providing hundreds of Chinese professionals with the skills they'll need to help modernize their country's economy.

"The need that we're trying to help fill is so great, it's almost a frightening responsibility," says management professor Alex Whitmore.

The program, which also involves the Royal Bank, Great-West Life Assurance Company and the Canadian Association of Graduate Management Schools, has just earned a prize from the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada. The award is one of five that the AUCC hands out each year to honour universities for innovative international involvements. The McGill-led Canada-China Financial Services Development Project was named best university-private sector partnership.

McGill and the program's other participants have been collaborating with the Graduate School of the People's Bank of China (GSPBC) in Beijing. The program's aims are twofold. One goal is to train Chinese professionals working in commercial banking, trust securities and insurance -- to give them a sense of advanced practices and international standards. The program is also oriented to helping the GSPBC create a self-sustaining, permanent structure for providing such training itself. So far, 350 managers in China have received training through the program.

Chinese faculty have also traveled to McGill to receive instruction in how to train others, and some students in the program have earned internships with the Royal Bank and Great-West.

The program has become so successful that McGill will be opening up a second training centre in Shanghai in a few months. "Originally, we were thinking of that facility for something else," says St-Amand. "We thought we could provide courses for employees of foreign banks. But the Chinese told us, 'No, no, we need the training more. If you give us quality, we'll pay your price.''

Once the Shanghai centre is open, between 750 and 1,000 Chinese managers a year will participate in the program.

The Canada-China Financial Services Development Project began in 1995 with $1 million in funding for four years. The Canadian International Development Agency provided half the money, with McGill, its corporate partners and the GSPBC providing the rest. The program is expected to become self-sustaining soon -- through the payment of tuition fees by Chinese students and corporations and through the continuing financial participation of the Canadian industrial partners.

Whitmore says his faculty has been active in China since the early 1980s. "McGill has an excellent reputation over there," he says. "We're seen as an institution with very high standards."

St-Amand adds that his faculty has used its presence in China to build up a network of academic and business contacts. These factors combine to make McGill a very attractive partner for companies looking to get a foothold in China -- although industry didn't see it that way at first.

"A few years ago, we almost had to beg businesses to work with us on projects like this," says St-Amand. "They preferred going it alone. I think we've really proved ourselves with this project. Now [companies] call me up, looking for things that we can work on together.

"When a company comes with us, we help them to develop relationships. In China, it's very important to start with a relationship before you do business. This gives [companies] an opportunity to be known in the country and to be known for playing a helpful role. They're acting as good corporate citizens and contributing to economic reforms. The Chinese take that very seriously."

St-Amand emphasizes that McGill's corporate partners add much more than funding to the project.

"The old model for working with companies is that you get them to pay you a little something so you can do a little research. The Royal Bank and Great-West came into this project as full partners. Their people have been working with ours as trainers. They've helped define the program.

"It's a new model for business faculties and businesses working together. I think that's why we got the award."

The program has become a model for other projects involving McGill and corporate collaborators in Kazakstan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan. As a direct result of its track record in China, McGill was recently awarded funding by the World Bank's International Finance Corporation to start a similar project in central Asia. Both the IFC and CIDA point to the McGill program as an example for other university/industry collaborations. CIDA was so impressed it tapped McGill to head up another new project, the Canada China University-Industry Development Partnership. Over 20 Canadian universities have been invited to take part.

St-Amand says that the Chinese professionals taking the seminars and workshops weren't always what the trainers and faculty expected.

"The cliché about the Chinese was that nobody in the classroom would ask any questions. People expected the Chinese students to be very quiet and shy. But that hasn't been the case. They do challenge the instructors. They argue. They ask all kinds of questions. They really have a hunger to learn everything they can."