S.F. State to help WTO

San Francisco State University will train nearly
10,000 Chinese workers this fall in Western
banking practices, as the People's Republic
prepares to join the World Trade Organization.

Chinese banks will pay for the training, which will
emphasize the hands-on over the theoretical -- from
how to serve customers with a smile to loan risk
analysis.

"They need to upgrade their biggest asset, their
people," said Ronald Shon, president of
Vancouver-based China Ventures, Inc., the firm
that is helping the Chinese government train the
employees. "We are going to start from the very
basic building blocks."

The university was a good fit because more than 50
percent of faculty in its finance department speaks
Mandarin.

Faculty from SFSU began preliminary training in
Beijing earlier this year for about 100 officers of the
Guong Dong Development Bank. Those bank
employees were given a summary of Western
banking practices.

In all, about 2 million Chinese bank employees will
be trained through the CSU system.

"For us, the real win here is opening a dialogue with
the Chinese banking community and developing
exchanges," said Jeff Munks, assistant dean of the
downtown center for the San Francisco State
College of Extended Learning which will oversee
the program.