In face of the opportunities and challenges brought forward by economic globalization and China's accession to the WTO, improvement of public administration of the government has become a key link in gaining the initiative amongst increasingly fierce international competition. For this reason, the Devleopment Research Center (DRC) of the State Council, the School of Public Administration at Tsinghua University and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University are jointly running the Executive Training Program for Public Administration. With a term of 5 years, the program trains about 60 director generals annually from the central and local governments.