Foreign business schools — bogged down by red tape, problems with local partners, and limited demand — are shutting down their executive M.B.A. programs in China, according to article on BusinessWeek’s Web site.

The article says that European and American M.B.A. programs have faced many of the same problems as foreign companies, which came to China with dreams of tapping into the Chinese market of some 1.3 billion people.

Foreign degree providers are required to become partners with a Chinese university and are closely monitored by China’s Ministry of Education. The biggest problem, providers said, is that relatively few Chinese have the language skills needed to survive in an English-language academic program.

Walter Hutchens, a professor at Whitworth University in Spokane, Wash., who has advised several American universities on establishing ventures in China, called executive-education programs in China “a field of broken dreams.”

According to BusinessWeek, several universities have scaled back or halted their programs in China over the past two years. They include the China Europe International Business School and the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. The State University of New York at Buffalo closed its joint-venture program in 2004.

Even as Western universities retreat from China, the number of Chinese-run business schools has grown, said the magazine. Some 30 Chinese universities have been approved by the Ministry of Education to offer executive M.B.A. programs. —Paul Mooney