• Understand China's current economic structure
• Comprehend economic dynamics and drivers of growth
• Understand China and its place in the world economy
• Evaluate opportunities for Western Companies
• Critically analyze economic news and analysts' commentaries

This course’s main objective is to provide students with tools to successfully understand Chinese's economic trends, both domestic and international in order to understand how to do business in China and how to compete with Chinese companies who expand abroad.  In the West, there are many mis perceptions about China that often lead to wrong business decisions and, eventually the failure of the venture. In order to get a full understand, we will compare China to other modern economies but we will also spend time of compare today's China to yesterday's China, to understand the development dynamics: just taking a snapshot of the current situation often fails to identify the direction in which the country it is moving. To make things even more complex, China itself is far from being a homogeneous country with many regional peculiarities that must be taken into account when deciding not only “if to do business in China”, but also “where in China to do business”.

In this course, we will address all main themes of the current economic situation in China. It will be a journey across this wonderful country that will take us from to the remote countryside areas to the modern skyscrapers of Shanghai to understand what it is that has made 1.3 billion people growth at 10% per year for almost 40 years. We will understand why every year 20 million people leave the rural areas, how this flow of people fuels the manufacturing industry which, in turns, support the real estate sector and how is all this development financed by the banking system. 

We will have sessions focusing on individual industries, from three different angles: production, consumption and technology. The discussion of industries will also be a pretext to go deeper into the analysis of the economic structure of the country.

In almost every class, we will use international comparisons, so that the student acquires an understanding of the relative position of China in the world economy.
 
We will conclude by discussing the new growth sectors that offer best investment opportunities. 

At the end of the course, students should have developed a deep understanding of China and, hopefully, this will have enhanced their desire to know more.

This course is macro-economics/finance based, students are not required to have taken macro courses, but should be prepared to make extensive use of Excel, Data Analysis from Statistics Websites. The course is not a quantitative course in the traditional sense, but neither is qualitative on cultural aspects of China. 

Preliminary assignment:There will also be a preliminary assignment that students need to complete prior to the commencement of the course. Scope of this assignment is to give student some background knowledge and be better prepared on day 1 of the course. Details of this assignment will be provided later on. 

Class 1: Review of China Reforms and Development:1978 to today

Class 2: Structure of Chinese Economy and New Normal

Class 3: China's Rural Economy and Income Disparity

Class 4: Migration, Urbanization and Real Estate

Class 5: Central Bank, Monetary Policy Banking and Financial System

Class 6: Government Fiscal Policy, Debt and Crisis

Class 7: Industry Focus: Manufacture, Energy, Fashion, IT, Food

Class 8: Saving, Consumption, Demographics and Middle Class

Class 9: International Trade, FDI and RMB Internationalization

Class 10: One Belt One Road, Silk Road, AIIB and Int' Relations

Class 11:  Reviewing and putting it all together. 

Preliminary Assignment: To help students get maximum value from ISUP courses, instructors provide a reading or a small number of readings or video clips to be read or viewed before the start of classes with a related task scheduled for class 1 in order to 'jump-start' the learning process.

Course timetable is available on https://www.cbs.dk/uddannelse/international-summer-university-programme-isup/courses-and-exams.

We reserve the right to cancel the course if we do not get enough applications. This will be communicated on https://www.cbs.dk/uddannelse/international-summer-university-programme-isup/courses-and-exams end February 2018 at the latest.

Mandatory readings:

Readings will be assigned on a week by week basis, to ensure discussion will be based on most recent macro-economic events related to China

Additional relevant readings:

Arthur Kroeber: China’s Economy – What everyone needs to know