Impressions of Public Administrative Education in Northwestern China

Abstract

Visits to China by U.S. faculty members in the field of public administration tend to be concentrated in eastern China, especially in Beijing and Shanghai, and to a lesser extent Guangzhou. Perhaps most of the exchanges involving U.S. public administrative faculty occur in connection with Remnim University of China, located in Beijing. As is well known, there are marked regional differences between the urban and rural sectors as well as between the eastern and western areas in contemporary China. In June 2007, I had the opportunity to visit and lecture at the School of Management at Lanzhou University in Lanzhou, Gansu. Previously, I had lectured and/or taught at Renmin University of China, Northwest University in Xi'an (Xi Bei Da Xue), and Fudan University in Shanghai. My visit to Lanzhou University included two lectures and several formal, but unstructured, meetings with graduate and undergraduate students. This article summarizes my impressions of public administrative education at Lanzhou University, which to a large extent services northwestern China in the field of management.