On April 4, 2008, the Columbia Business School Greater China Society hosted its first China Business Conference, themed "Opportunities in Transition." Fangruo Chen, the Ira Rennert Professor of Business at Columbia, moderated a panel discussion on China's evolution from an outsourcing base to a target market. The panelists were Sachin Shah, vice president for strategy and business development at MetLife International; Ying Luo, principal in the Boston Consulting Group's Beijing office; John Liu '01, cofounder of advisory firm Aubridge Partners, LLC; and Suresh Dalai '00, senior consultant for Kurt Salmon Associates.

"During the Tang Dynasty," declared Fangruo Chen as he opened the discussion, "China represented 20 percent of the world's economy. Now the goal of the country is to regain its former glory. It will do this by moving from seller to buyer." China took on the role of the world's outsourcing base in the 1970s when it relaxed economic restrictions, opening up a huge pool of cheap labor to the world. Foreign companies promptly responded by moving their most labor-intensive processes to China, fueling the country's economic growth. "China's GDP is now the fourth-largest in the world in nominal terms," Professor Chen said. "Adjusted for purchasing power parity, it is the second-largest." China's rapid expansion is fueling domestic income growth and consumption that companies increasingly find difficult to ignore.