As from 2012, students from CBS can replace the daily grind in Copenhagen with dim sum and campus life in Beijing. The first results of an agreement on an institutional collaboration within education and research between the Danish universities, the Science Ministry and the Graduate University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (GUCAS) are in the pipeline.

The aim of the new initiative ”The Sino-Danish Center for Education and Research (SDC)” is to provide the students with an opportunity to obtain a so-called double degree and receive diplomas both from a Danish and a Chinese university. 
The project will link Danish and Chinese innovation and development within natural and social science.

- Both Chinese and Danes have shown great interest in building a relationship based on confidence through SDC. 15 new projects under the auspices of the new centre were outlined at a workshop at CBS in March 2011. CBS is currently the prime mover in relation to accreditation and coordination of two master's programmes, and the project will later on be offering PhD programmes and new research, says Bo Bøgeskov, Head of Secretariat at the Department of Business and Politics.

There is no doubt that Asia and especially China will be the growth poles in the future. According to Bo Bøgeskov, it is essential that a robust and trustful research collaboration is established in order to create competences and knowledge that will help Danish companies on the global market in the future.

- By giving Danish and Chinese students a possibility of working together, we are opening up to unrealised possibilities in a market that Denmark wants to be part of. The students are prepared for intercultural cooperative ways of working and cultural challenges. In this way, they integrate easier in international Asia-related companies in the future, he explains.

When a collaboration with a geographic distance of 7500 km is launched, there will always be a great deal of financial and administrative challenges to handle. But the geographic distance isn't the only factor that may impede the development. The cultural distance also plays an important factor in this collaboration.

- There is definitely a challenge in working across cultures when two as different cultures as these meet, but it will also be an interesting and educating process, where both parties can be challenged in their own cultural insight and different pedagogy and types of learning, says Bo Bøgeskov.