BEIJING - Amena Schlaijker makes her students cluck like chickens, mimic a toothbrush, jump up and down or pretend to die an agonizing death.

The aim is to make budding business leaders think outside the box.

It may sound extreme, but this is China, where students have grown up on rote learning and the ruling Communist Party has long discouraged creative thinking lest it lead to challenging authority.

"You can tell them to think outside of the box, but some employees don't even have the concept of a box to begin with," said Roy Magee, an Australian whose training company, AchieveGlobal, has operated in China since 1997. "We just have to go in and start from scratch."

It comes as the government works on the economy's next leap forward - to transform the nation's industry from "Made in China" to "Invented in China." Addressing parliament last year, President Hu Jintao spoke of making China a nation of innovators. At the same time, China is recognizing that as wages and land prices rise, it is no longer a cheap place to manufacture other countries' products, and needs to invent its own to remain globally competitive.

While the state is spending billions of dollars on technology parks, research grants and art programs, the drive for creativity has spawned a market for classes run by foreign trainers like Schlaijker and Magee.

"It's a matter of survival," said Schlaijker, a Chinese-speaking American who works in Shanghai for ?What If!, a British marketing and employee-development consultancy.

That's where those chicken impressions come in. During an English-language session at a Shanghai golf resort, ?What If! trainers worked with L'Oreal China employees to psyche them up for creative thinking. Trainees flapped their arms, mimicking a "sexy," "happy" or "Italian" bird. A rubber chicken thrown down the hall disturbed a Prada conference next door.

In one of the more bizarre exercises, participants gathered in a circle and pretended to die horribly. The room filled with choking moans and high-pitched screams as each vied to produce the most awful death throes.

"Everyone felt awkward at first, but it definitely got our energy level pumping for brainstorming," said a grinning participant from L'Oreal China, who would not give his name because the company does not want participants talking to reporters.

In a session for Sainsbury's Supermarkets Ltd., Britain's No. 3 supermarket chain, trainees were told to impersonate ingredients of a new stir-fry product. One tilted her body like a bottle of cooking oil, while another played the spatula, running around and pushing the rest, who jumped around like ingredients on fire.