GUANGZHOU, July 18 -- Business executives and entrepreneurs in Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA) programs in China may have noticed a bevy of bureaucrats among their classmates.

Though originally designed as a career boost for business elites, many Chinese EMBA courses have seen high enrollment of government officials, with experts saying the classroom interaction between officials and entrepreneurs not only poses corruption risks, but also raises suspicions over misuse of public money.

Recruitment personnel at Peking University told Xinhua the university's EMBA programs that enroll officials are very popular and have been unaffected by the ongoing crackdown on corruption and government extravagance.

"We've enrolled enough students for four classes (this term). Each class has 20 students, and half of them are officials," a staff member identified as "Teacher Zhang" told Xinhua.

"It's only open to officials above the county level," said another recruitment staff member surnamed Yu.

According to Yu, the program charges 668,000 yuan (107,700 U.S. dollars) in tuition fees, not including expenses for overseas visits and domestic junkets held by local government heads.

"We don't issue academic certificates, but being our student can help you expand connections," she said.

There are more than 100 EMBA programs in China that openly advertise themselves as having "high-ranking officials" as students.

"Just flip through the alumni list of business schools that offer such EMBA classes and you see party secretaries, procurators, court and bureau heads," said He Jie, a political advisor and member of the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang.

A roll obtained by Xinhua from a top Chinese business school showed there were 11 officials among its EMBA class' 149 students, including a vice mayor, a district-level party secretary and cadres from the Communist Youth League.

He, who has researched the programs, said they hardly benefit officials' competence but serve mostly as a platform for networking. He proposed banning officials from attending such courses during a political consultative conference in southern Guangdong Province in January.

"Some businessmen wish to access more resources by getting to know officials, while the latter may hope to trade their power for personal gains. EMBA programs could offer such junctions," He said.

Zhu Lijia, professor at the Chinese Academy of Governance, said by making company heads "classmates" of the officials, such EMBA programs may "facilitate the formation of corrupt groups."

WHO PAYS THE BILL?

Battling corruption and government extravagance has been a central task of the Communist Party of China (CPC) since Xi Jinping took the party helm in 2012. Since then, luxury banquets, private clubs and overseas tours by officials have all come under fire for their connection to corruption.

But a Guangdong official told Xinhua on condition of anonymity that "his friends" had attended EMBA classes that included deluxe parties and overseas sightseeing, which pushed up the total costs to 1 million yuan for each student before graduation.

Officials rarely dig into their own pockets, He said, with some having their fees reimbursed by the government, while in other cases the programs willingly deduct or even scrap tuition fees for officials.

The Peking University program, for instance, has a policy of exempting tuition if "an official can bring three other entrepreneurs to the class."

"By so doing, the tuition of official is actually shifted to entrepreneurs, and the program also hopes to bring in more officials for entrepreneurs to court," said Li Chengyan, a researcher on anti-corruption at Peking University.