Southern Medical University

Southern Medical University was formerly the First Military Medical University of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, founded in 1951. It was designated a national key university in 1979. In August 2004, it was transferred in its entirety to Guangdong Province and renamed Southern Medical University. It is the only medical institution among Guangdong’s first 5 provincially administered high-level universities receiving priority development, one of China’s first medical universities jointly developed by national ministries and a province, one of the first 8 universities to offer an eight-year clinical medicine program integrating undergraduate and doctoral education, and one of the first national pilots for the Excellent Doctor and Excellent Doctor of Chinese Medicine education and training programs.

Located at the foot of scenic Baiyun Mountain in Guangzhou, it has Guangzhou and Shunde campuses covering nearly 1.7 million square meters, with 1.224 million square meters of buildings.

The university has 22 teaching units and over 20000 full-time students, including over 10000 postgraduate students, over 13000 undergraduates and over 1000 international students. It has 8 directly affiliated hospitals, 7 jointly developed partner hospitals and 2 jointly developed specialist medical centers. These include 13 Grade III Class A hospitals, with approximately 22500 available beds and approximately 30 million medical service visits annually.

It has 11 first-level doctoral degree authorizations, 16 first-level master’s degree authorizations, 4 professional doctoral degree categories, 15 professional master’s degree categories and 10 postdoctoral research stations. It has formed a medicine-centered system with coordinated development in science, engineering, law, management and education. Fifteen disciplines rank in the global ESI top 1%: clinical medicine, pharmacology and toxicology, molecular biology and genetics, biology and biochemistry, neuroscience and behavior, immunology, chemistry, materials science, microbiology, general social sciences, agricultural sciences, environment and ecology, psychiatry and psychology, engineering, and computer science. Clinical medicine, pharmacology and toxicology, and biology and biochemistry rank in the global top 1‰. In the UK’s Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2026, Southern Medical University ranks among the global top 300.

It has over 2000 full-time teachers, with 381 instances of national high-level talent recognition, including academicians and Changjiang Scholars. Its national, provincial and ministerial research platforms include state key laboratories, national clinical medicine research centers and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Center for Brain Science and Brain-Inspired Intelligence. The number of approved National Natural Science Foundation projects has ranked in the national top 30 for 10 consecutive years. Its research has appeared in leading international journals including Science, Cell, Nature, JAMA and NEJM.

The university began its English-taught undergraduate clinical medicine program for international students in 2005 and began admitting Chinese Government Scholarship students in 2006. It has admitted over 3500 international degree students from 121 countries. It is one of the Ministry of Education’s ten foreign-aid education bases and a core foreign-aid training institution of the Ministry of Commerce. It has trained 4032 medical education administrators, health officials and technical professionals from 124 friendly countries.

The university has extensive international relations and has established friendly partnerships with 97 renowned universities, research institutions and medical organizations in 29 countries and regions. It is a member of international or regional education cooperation organizations including the Belt and Road International Medical Education Alliance, Belt and Road Tropical Medicine Alliance, Belt and Road Chinese Medicine Development Alliance, Sino-Russian Medical University Alliance, China-Central and Eastern European Countries Hospital Alliance, and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao University Alliance.