Four international teams made up of students from both MIT Sloan and Tsinghua SEM have carried out this year's China Lab Project here at Tsinghua during March 14-29.

Each team comprised of two MIT Sloan students and two Tsinghua SEM IMBA students. Their work mainly focuses on providing professional consulting service to a certain program of a collaborating company within three months. Students helped to solve practical problems concerning corporate operation, provide proposals on the company’s market strategies, business plans and competition analysis report for four companies including CreditEase, Tarena, Dintaifung, and CCTV GoldenBridge.

Fang Xing, a Tsinghua undergraduate alumna, who participated in this year’s China Lab Project as a MIT Sloan MBA student, said this project provided a good opportunity for practice, meanwhile she felt much pressure as she felt “she was more like a professional rather than a student.”

Zhang Aiping, SEM's IMBA student and the leader of Beijing team, said the participation of international students from India, France, and Philippines brought them valuable cross-cultural communication experience, and she “cherished such experience very much”.

This years’ China Lab Project included three phases. In March, students from China and the United States compose four teams and carry out on-the-spot work at collaborating companies; in April, Chinese students fly to the United States for one-week long study; each team will present their working report after in-depth analysis, the third phase will last two months; Finally students will gain credits after they pass the evaluation.

China Lab grows out of a collaboration that began in 1996, when MIT Sloan established the MIT-China Management Education Project to strengthen graduate management education at selected Chinese universities. The Project originated with Tsinghua University in Beijing and Fudan University in Shanghai. Lingnan (University) College, Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou and Yunnan University in Kunming have since joined.