Yang Mei

    yangmei_szdaily@163.com

    IN 1818, an English missionary named Robert Morrison opened a Chinese school, Anglo-Chinese College, in Macao. Two hundred years later, Peking University HSBC Business School (PHBS) is going to England to establish its new campus, Peking University HSBC Business School Oxford Campus (PHBS Oxford), which is scheduled to open in 2018.

    On Monday, PHBS officially signed a contract with The Open University to purchase the school’s site in Oxford for the location of PHBS Oxford, which shows the ambition of Chinese universities to go global.

    The site is a British manor that was built in 1880 and covers an area of over 60,000 square meters. It boasts a lawn, a lake and three main buildings. With a total construction area of 3,600 square meters, the new campus will reuse the original school’s buildings, which previously belonged to The Open University, according to Hai Wen, founding dean of HSBC Business School.

    “The new campus plans to enroll 100 to 200 graduate students mainly from Britain and other European countries,” Hai told the Shenzhen Daily, adding that the tuition will be priced with reference to that of other business schools in Britain.

    These international students will take a two-year program to pursue their postgraduate degrees in finance, management and economics. They are required to study at the Oxford campus in the first year and at the main campus in Shenzhen in the second year.

    When asked the reason, the dean explained: “We hope these international students are interested in China and can understand more about China, so after they graduate, we expect them to do business with China, cooperate with China in multinational groups or even work in China.”

    To reach this objective, PHBS will set up many courses oriented towards international students incorporating Chinese cases or practices, Hai said.

    China studies will be a compulsory course for international students, through which they will be able to learn more about China’s politics, culture, society and rural areas. “By doing so, they can quickly adjust to their second-year of study when they come to Shenzhen,” said Hai.

    Additionally, the PHBS Oxford campus will set up a Peking University Oxford Center and Shenzhen Oxford Innovation Center, which will serve as platforms for the two sides to utilize each other’s capital and technological resources and promote Sino-U.K. cooperation in economy, finance, science and technology.

    To attract excellent students who would love to know more about China, the school will offer full and half scholarships, according to the dean.

    At present, PHBS has completed its purchase of the school site in Oxford and preparation is underway in an orderly manner.

    The school will begin employing faculty and enrolling students this June.