Fifty-nine local Chinese officials leave Beijing for the United States Saturday to take a six-week training course on public administration and international development issues.

The educational mission is expected to enhance the trainees' public management strategies and analytical skills to help prepare them to face the challenges at home, said Sun Xiaoyu, vice-director of the State Council Development Research Centre (DRC).

The trip is part of a "China's Leaders in Development Programme" kicked off by the DRC, Tsinghua University in Beijing and Harvard University last year, to train around 60 Chinese officials each year until 2006, according to DRC sources.

Tian Qian, deputy secretary general of Tsinghua University, said further reform of government management in China will require high-calibre government officials.

The joint programme at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (KSG) represents a bold and practical move towards upgrading the skills of officials, he said.

Candidates for the pro-gramme are usually high-ranking local government leaders under 45 years of age. But this year the "students" seem to be generally younger, and fewer than 10 of them are women, according to Wang Youqiang, a staff member of the Tsinghua University School of Public Policy and Management.

Before they left for Harvard, the participants had already finished a three-week crash course at Tsinghua University taught by the university faculty and DRC experts and focusing on the key economic and social issues in China, according to Sun Xiaoyu.

Anthony Saich, faculty chair of Asia Programmes, who is responsible for the training project at Harvard, said last year all the Harvard faculties were "enormously impressed" with the quality of the Chinese students in the programme.

"To be quite honest it exceeded our expectations," he said in a telephone interview.

"This year, our main objective remains the same: to provide these officials with the tools to think strategically about local government management and to introduce a number of the best practices from around the world for their consideration," he said.

The American costs of the programme are being underwritten by Amway (China).

Li Chaoxing, vice-director of the Tianjin Municipal Economic Commission, who participated in last year's programme, yesterday said the Harvard project presented a new mode in training officials.

"I was impressed by the case discussions," Li said. "What I learned is a method of thinking geared to finding solutions."

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