Hello and welcome to the MBS China Centre quarterly newsletter!

In early September we welcomed professor Rothwell, president and vice-chancellor of the university who accompanied by Mike Gibbon, director for recruitment and international development, seeking for further opportunities for cooperation in both teaching and research in Beijing. More than 70 alumni enjoyed a dinner hosted by the president.

Summer is a holiday season but life here keeps full but fruitful. 98 new students started their learning journey at MBS China Centre in July and new semester workshops begun. We orgniased first MBS China graduates reunion party in Shanghai during Prof. Elaine Ferneley’s visit and conducted a series marketing events in Beijing and Shanghai.    

MBS China Centre jointly organised a Business Networking event – ‘China Opportunities’ Seminar for “Study China Programme" Participants in Shanghai.  On the banquet, I was pleased to see the 180 undergraduates from top UK universities got profound insight from high end speaker including Managing Director from Deloitte and Executive Director at China-Britain Business Council, and interact with local part-time MBA students who are all successful business leaders.

Another piece of great news is the first MBS China Graduates Reunion Party was held successfully in Shanghai. We were honored to have Mr. Matthew Knowles, new East China Director of British Council to join our celebration together with 50 graduate representatives and their families.

As part of the career service to our students and alumni, MBS China Centre has established strategic cooperation with Lumina Learning, a UK leading assessment, to provide professional training to new joining MBA students as the first step in their career transformation journey.

Since established, we had built and maintained a long term good relationship with top companies and our TMPs.  On occasion of MBS 50th Anniversary, PARKER Great China presented a tailor made gift to China Centre to celebrate this special year. MBS China Centre, as the Talent management Partner of Unilever was engaged in its talent learning week, interacted with senior management people and provided intelligent talent management solutions onsite.

Taking the opportunity, I would like to say big thanks to our workshop tutors, they delivered a series of wonderful taster sessions to our prospective students.

It is reported, President Xi will visit the national Grapheme Institute at the University of Manchester during his first state visit to the UK later this month. We look forward to make more contribution to the education sector between two countries!

For your friends and colleagues who may be interested in MBS, please keep in mind the close of January 2016 intake recruitment is approaching.

Sherry Fu

Regional Director

Manchester Business School

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, FRS, President & Vice-Chancellor, The University of Manchester, visited Beijing in early September. Despite there being no direct flight between the British city of Manchester and the Chinese mainland yet, the inconvenience in transport hasn’t hindered close exchanges and collaboration between the University of Manchester and its partners in China. The President herself visits China at least once a year, looking at common interests that might be shared on both teaching and research.  

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell hosted Manchester Alumni Dinner n Beijing on 10^th September. Nearly 100 alumni attended this event.

The President’s delegation includes Mike Gibbons, Director of Student Recruitment and International Development; Kate Bradbury, Events Officer Division of Development and Alumni Relations; Markus Karlsson-Jones, Global Volunteer and Networks Officer. Sherry Fu, Regional Director of Manchester Business School also joined the President in Beijing. 

When talking about Supply Chain Management (SCM), most companies have only paid attention to what was happening within their “four walls”, few businesses understood, much less managed, the entire chair of activities that ultimately delivered products to the final customer. 

Dr. Antony Potter, MBS Lecturer in Operations and Supply Chain Management has delivered a SCM workshop taster on 16th September, to showcase how we manage the SCM in "Manchester Method" in our MBA class. 

More business executives are biased towards answering question for company as ‘What market are we in and how can we do better?’ MBS China Centre has invited one of our leading lights in the Marketing world, presenting some of the best insight and foresight within ever-changing global business market. 

On 22nd September, Dr. Alison Ashton, Course Coordinator for Marketing, Manchester Business School has delivered introductory insights from a strategic perspective of business marketing and shared the most cutting-edge cases and theories on Marketing with our potential MBA students. 

The Alumni Event “Global Business Trend and Supply Chain Complexity” was successfully held in the evening of Friday, 3^rd July, which attracted around 70 Global MBA students and alumni.

Besides being the world factory, China is also becoming one of the biggest trading blocks and high consumption countries. All big retailers fight to get a share of this new potential market. Agility of supply chain has become a critical differentiator to win in this new battle field. Our distinguished Speaker, Paul Man, shared his insight and years of experience in the supply chain industry.  

As part of the career service to our students and alumni, MBS China Centre has established strategic cooperation with Lumina Learning, a UK leading assessment, to provide professional training to new joining MBA students as the first step in their career transformation journey. 

The Lumina Workshops were divided into 4 sessions taking place on every Saturday in August, delivered by certificated coach of Lumina Learning. It was regarded as a welcome gift to 2015 July Intake MBA students, and was very well received.

Alumni and Career Service Event “Pharmaceutical Industry Marketing” was successfully held on 27^th Aug. Stephen Feng, Associate Brand Director of Lilly China and Ti Wang, a young Entrepreneur, shared their insights of China healthcare industry, the current market overview and analysis of this industry.  

This event has attracted over 40 students and alumni. In order to benefit more students especially those who are not based in Shanghai, this event was broadcasted through online webinar, which was very well received. Both Stephen and Ti has a MBA degree, they have also shared their experience of how taking MBA has changed their life and career at the end of event.

Despite there being no direct flight between the British city of Manchester and the Chinese mainland yet, the inconvenience in transport hasn’t hindered close exchanges and collaboration between the University of Manchester and its partners in China.

Nancy Rothwell, President and Vice-Chancellor of the university, said staff of the university travel to China all the time and she herself visits China at least once a year, looking at common interests that might be shared on both teaching and research.

So far, at least 20 cooperative programs have been formed during the past several years. “The number is continuously growing,” Rothwell told China Daily during a trip to China in early September.
According to Rothwell, the university has established strong collaborations with some of the best universities in China, including Tsinghua University, Peking University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, whose positions have gone up on the world’s top 100 list of the recently released QS World University Rankings.

“We have a lot of partnerships both in research and teaching , where students can go and do part of their degree or do visits and exchanges,” she said. “Some of our students come to Chinese universities as well.”
During this trip to China, Rothwell led a delegation from the university and signed an agreement with the China Scholarship Council to offer more scholarships to PhD students.

The university now has about 4,000 students from China, 1,500 undergraduates, 2,000 masters students and 300 doctoral students, spreading across different disciplines and programs.
“The largest number is in our business school, but we also have a lot in engineering, development studies, materials and mathematics, mechanical engineering and social sciences,” Rothwell said.

She said Chinese students now make up 10 percent of the student body and are the largest group besides students from Britain and other European countries. And applications to the university from Chinese students is increasing every year.
“Manchester a very popular university for Chinese students,” she said.

To maintain its attraction to Chinese students, Rothwell said they had done a lot to make the students satisfied, including letting students get to know the programs and taking feedback from them.
“We enable students to come for a short period as an undergraduate; they might like it and come back as a masters student,” she said.
“We also have quite a number of MOOCs [massive open online courses], so students might have a taster by doing a MOOC and then decide if they like the university,” she said, adding that they continue to develop the campus to make life more convenient and comfortable for students.

Rothwell said the good news is that there will be direct flights from Manchester to the Chinese mainland next year.
“We already have direct flights to Hong Kong, but we expect to soon have a direct flight to the mainland, which will make it even easier for Chinese students to arrive in the city of Manchester,” she said.