Spring 2004 1 Marketing Education Review, Volume 14, Number 1 (Spring 2004). THE STATE OF MARKETING AND BUSINESS EDUCATION IN CHINA Ilan Alon and Le Lu Every truth has four corners: as a teacher I give you one corner, and it is for you to find the other three.— Confucius China has recently experienced an increased demand for Western-style marketing and business practices due in part to a burgeoning economy and recent entry into the WTO. Market-based education has diffused rapidly across China as Chinese universities have started to imitate their Western counterparts and have entered into joint venture agreements with them. First, increased demand for Western-style education has far exceeded supply, causing shortages of qualified workers. Second, marketing and business education still lags behind the West in quality and pedagogical approaches. Third, Western-based approaches exert social influences by challenging the traditional assumptions of educational institutions and business and economic functions. This paper discusses the cultural development of Chinese educational systems, the growth of modern marketing and business education, and the challenges facing marketing and business education in China today. Introduction Market-based business education in China is a dis- crete field devoted to the acquisition and application of the unique set of knowledge and skills used in com- mercial or industrial establishments. It develops an un- derstanding of business, technology, and economic con- cepts; it develops opportunities for the application of basic academic, thinking, and interpersonal skills; it helps in the economic transition which China has em- barked on since 1978. Its study contributes to a student becoming a productive worker, an economically suc- cessful entrepreneur, and a keen consumer. Business education thus defined and described is applicable in the Chinese context today, but the systematic develop- ment of education in business-related fields and its na- tionwide application has a brief history, going back no more than twenty years. Thus, any effort to evaluate China’s business education with the criteria used in the judgment of western business education is essentially doomed. A reasonable evaluation has to be based on the social and historical background of China’s busi- ness education. This article sets the framework for ana- lyzing marketing and business education in China, aim- ing to provide a macro-understanding of China’s busi- ness education, a framework into which anyone who is interested in a more detailed knowledge can deposit his/her information. The need for marketing education has become appar- ent, as China has transitioned from a planned economy controlled by the state to a more capitalistic society guided by free market principles (Alon 2003a). Market- ing education in China has followed the general path of business education: before the formation of the com- munist government in 1949, it was taught in universi- ties throughout China. After that point, a seller’s mar- ket was developed, one based on resource scarcity con- trolled by the central government, and there was no need for market-based consumer orientation, distribu- tion, pricing, promotion, or branding (Zhou 1991). Mar- keting and business education as it is taught in the West reappeared in 1978 when the Central Committee ILAN ALON (Ph.D., Kent State University) is Associate Professor of International Business and Co-Director of the Global Practicum Pro- gram at Crummer Graduate School of Business, Rollins College. He is the author, editor, and co-editor of 9 books and over 60 published articles, chapters, and conference papers. His two recent books Chinese Culture, Organizational Behavior and International Business Management (Greenwood, 2003) and Chinese Economic Transition and International Marketing Strategy (Greenwood, 2003) are widely distributed among US research and university libraries. Dr. Alon is a recent recipient of the Chinese Marketing Award, a dual award from the Tripod Market- ing Association (China) and the Society for Marketing Advances (USA). He is also an international business education consultant and a featured speaker in many professional associations. (email: ilan.alon@rollins.edu) LE LU is Professor and Dean of the Shanghai-New York International Language Institute, University of Shanghai for Science and Technol- ogy. Her research covers lexicology, semantics, and cross-cultural communications. She has written numerous academic papers which were published in prestigious Chinese journals, books and Western journals. Her books include a translation of Tradition by Edward Shils, an American sociologist, two co-edited dictionaries, and a number of textbooks used widely throughout China. She delivered 15 TV lectures broadcasted nationwide by China Central Television. She and her research partner successfully finished a project, funded by Ford Foun- dation, concerning Social Changes in China and Vocabulary Changes in the Chinese Language. She has recently participated in research funded by US universities aimed at exploring China’s market and has co-authored a few reports and articles published in business oriented journals resulting from this research. (email: lllule@online.sh.cn)