For this reason, an important growth area for the international school is the customised EMBA.

Buck Pei is associate dean and director of the China programme in Beijing for the WP Carey School of Business (Arizona State University), which offers a customised course for Motorola as well as open courses.

The school's relationship with Motorola goes back 40 years.

'The executives we receive on our Motorola EMBA in Beijing are focused on a career path in their company, said Dr Pei.

'The course covers all of the EMBA subjects but is designed with the Motorola corporate culture in mind. This is Motorola's investment in the next generation of managers for its Chinese operation.'

WP Carey has also established a Shanghai EMBA. Developed in co-operation with the Ministry of Finance and delivered in collaboration with the Shanghai National Accounting Institute, the programme is targeted at senior government officials and executives. It is taught at weekends in Putonghua and English.

'China must prepare its state-owned businesses to succeed internationally,' Dr Pei said.

In an initiative to offer the best of the west, the course employs faculty from top US schools including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, New York University and Yale, in addition to its own staff .

The University of Maryland's Robert Smith School of Business also offers a Beijing and Shanghai EMBA.

Walter Czarnecki, manager of the school's China business development and executive programmes in Beijing, said: 'Location is paramount. Our students are middle to senior managers from the Chinese government, multinationals and smaller companies looking for a global business perspective. But they need to find it here in China - they do not have the time to study overseas - and they need a combination of business theory and the practical aspects of management that they can bring to their jobs immediately.'

The school runs a customised course for Otis Elevator China. Quentin Lam, director of field operations at Otis, has worked in New York and will graduate from the China course next year.

'Few managers have time to find programmes outside of the corporate environment. As an American educated in the US, I can see clearly how the programme is impacting on my Chinese classmates. The macroeconomics class, for example, provided new concepts and perspectives they had not encountered before. Systems thinking taught me that problems cannot be approached only from an analytical point of view,' he said.

The opportunities to deliver business education on the mainland are of keen interest to Hong Kong and Australian providers. The Chinese University of Hong Kong offers an MBA programme in conjunction with Tsinghua University and a masters in professional accountancy with the Shanghai National Accounting Institute.

This year it launched an EMBA with Xian Jiatong University.

Chinese University recognises that its success in competing with the US and European schools will depend on the international experience and quality of its faculty. Indeed, it is arguably this feature, rather than a school's country of origin, that is the crux of the matter for Chinese business executives eager to take part in global markets.

In an impressive lineup, Chinese University draws its international faculty team from Australia, Hong Kong, Europe, India, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, mainland China, Southeast Asia and the US.

Melbourne Business School is in the process of developing a masters in marketing programme for 2006. Professor Richard Speed, associate dean of faculty resources, explained: 'We decided our EMBA, with its emphasis on face-to-face rather than distance learning, was probably too expensive for China. Our marketing programme is 13 units, compared with 21 units for the EMBA. It will be taught at Beihang University in Beijing over a period of about 18 months.'

The mainland also has its stars. The approach of the EMBA at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai, launched in 1995, represents an innovative blend of the ethos of the traditional western-style international schools with a clear focus on the needs of Chinese executives and business.

Rolf Cramer, the school's dean and vice-president, said business schools needed to understand the background of their students and, for their part, students needed to appreciate the importance of changing their mindsets.

'Frequently these students are already senior in their organisation and may be responsible for managing thousands of employees. They have come to learn new management skills but have never been exposed to modern western management concepts and techniques,' he said.

One of the major attractions of international schools, whatever their origins, is their ability to introduce China's business leaders of the future to their counterparts in other economies.

Cass Business School City University, London, is one of several British business schools in the China EMBA market. The Cass course is run in conjunction with the Bank of China and the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. In June, Cass ran its first international symposium in Shanghai for students on its European and China courses, creating an environment where alumni and local business leaders could meet, exchange views and develop global networks.

In the coming years corporate China can expect such initiatives to come thick and fast. With the growing choice of schools will come a keener analysis of the appropriate format for the China EMBA. Ultimately, these courses will be judged on how well they deliver to corporate China the business leaders of the future.

The top schools will need to be able to demonstrate a deeper understanding of Chinese business needs, a pragmatic blend of theory and practice, flexible learning programmes, dual English and Mandarin facilities and, above all, a faculty with first-class business experience across the global economy.

Debbie Harrison is a financial author and academic