"It is our pleasure to cooperate with such an international accounting institution as CIMA. Only with this can our graduates enhance their employability and have a wider choice of jobs ranging from local companies to multinational enterprises."

The five-year agreement is a result of three-year talks with CIMA. But "We think it is worthwhile to take this step, the only route we must get through if we want to challenge the competition from home and abroad," Tang said.

Through the pathway degree course, CIMA aim to help Lixin students to fast-track ambitions to be business leaders of the future by providing a rigorous and scientific syllabus that is highly relevant to current business need and through which businesses from around the world can select the right talent.

"We will bring some of CIMA courses into our syllabus starting this September when freshmen enter the school. We aim to train more future accounting elites," said Shao Jun, dean of the School of Accounting and Finance, SLUC.

A CIMA Lixin center will be also set up to provide a club for students, a place for CIMA to hold examination for candidates from East China and to have annual meeting, Shao said.

Harding said the importance of the management accountancy profession is increasingly recognized by the Chinese government. Its Ministry of Finance has, at the beginning of this year, promulgated a holistic plan to develop management accounting in China, in which the higher education institutions will play a vital role.

"The younger generation will not only bring Chinese reform forward but also go on to tackle the global issues of the environment, green energy and how to lift billions of people out of the poverty trap," he said.

"To solve these global problems they will need a global language. This language is not English or Chinese. It is business management."

Students turn waste into a start-up	Uyghur student nets market with nut