Interview with Xiaolong PENG

法国里昂商学院校友Xiaolong PENG
Xiaolong PENG

1986 CESMA

Xiaolong PENG is the first Chinese who got a CESMA (today MBA) degree at EMLYON in 1986. He used to work in international trading and corporate management, but has created his own company concentrating on automobile after-sale services.

Mr. Xiaolong PENG (MBA 1986) is the first Chinese who got a CESMA (today MBA) degree at EMLYON in 1986. He used to work in fields like international trading and corporate management. Not satisfied with his personal development, he returned to Hong Kong in 1990 and created his own company which concentrates on automobile after-sale services. Finding the lack of talents in China, Mr. PENG has also started a new business: automobile professional vocational education.

You are the first Chinese who got a CESMA (today MBA) degree at EMLYON in 1986! And I suppose that you were the only Chinese in your cohort. It’s impressive. How did you get enrolled to EMLYON? Today when you look back, how do you see your experience at EMLYON and France?

At that time, I was pursuing a diploma of French Literature and Civilization (equivalent to PhD preparatory classes) in France. I found it difficult to find an ideal job in France after graduation, but did not want to go back too early to China either. One of my friends introduced EMLYON Business School to me, saying that it was an excellent business school. That’s why I submitted the application.

It was a short learning period, but I have acquired confidence and developed a good way of doing things (project arrangement and implementation, dealing with the priorities, etc.) through a unique teaching method and by interacting with classmates of different profiles: case studying, group work on cases analysis and project-based learning.

What I’ve learnt in this multi-cultural and multi-lingual environment where classmates influenced and exchanged ideas with each other benefits me a lot all through my life.

Would you please describe your career path after EMLYON?

Upon graduation from EMLYON, I worked in fields like international trading and corporate management for a long time. I was then in charge of exportation for a company in France, going on business trips all around Asia.

A few years later, as I was not quite satisfied with my personal development, I returned to Hong Kong in 1990 and created my own company which entered the Chinese mainland market in 1994.

At that time, although the Chinese market was huge in terms of scale, political, economic and social problems caused much difficulty for me and I had to develop the company at a low pace. With more than 10 years’ efforts, I’ve successfully established a nationwide sales network in China.

Our company concentrates on automobile after-sale services. With China’s reform and opening up as well as its economic development, the Chinese automobile market gained a huge rise in the 1990s. Providing trading products and equipments to the market was no longer enough for the development of the company.

Meanwhile, I found that the Chinese market lacked talents who were good at techniques as well as services-providing. Therefore, since 2005 I began to exchange(communicate) with Chinese vocational colleges and realised that they lagged behind in vocational education and automobile professional vocational education. It was an “uncultivated land” which needed more social resources so as to create new teaching methods for vocational education as well as to discuss more in-depth questions.

Starting from cooperating with one or two vocational colleges, I’ve now created Long Initiatives (ZH) Co., Ltd (Zhuhai LongS Automotive Professional Training School), helping hundreds of vocational colleges establish the automobile technical training services major and train no less than 500 teachers for vocational training.

What’s the new project that you are implementing? What are your main challenges?

In 2014, I’ve helped establish the department of automobile service and application for Pujiang College co-established by Nanjing University of Technology and Chia Tai Group. Secondary college of Nanjing University of Technology, Pujiang College has a certain reputation in China’s Jiangsu Province. However, its teaching system relatively lags behind international institutions of the same type, especially their faculty which has not received continuous professional training. Therefore, the main challenges we’re facing now are as follows:

  • How to build a faculty for an application-oriented major of automobile service
  • How to propose teaching reform and implementation plans to leaders holding old mindset
  • I have to build bridges in order to cooperate with the OEM of a world-renowned automobile luxury brand with whom I’ve already had three years’ cooperation
  • How to build a set of application-oriented major of automobile service and its training and internship system, the object of which lies in educating integrated talents with both techniques and management skills who may survive in the automobile industry and successfully start their professional career

It’s a quite new sector. What attracted you to develop this new business?

For me it’s a new sector, but not entirely new. It remains in itself the same industry compared with the work I’ve been doing for the past 20 years. The thing is that it is transferred from business and management to an undergraduate education that is an application-oriented dual-system.

It is the numerous challenges and the purpose of helping more students to successfully start their professional career that motivates me to step forward.

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