Shanghai University of Sport

Shanghai University of Sport was founded in 1952 as the East China Institute of Physical Education and renamed Shanghai Institute of Physical Education in 1956. It was the first institution of higher education in sport established by the state after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Originally directly under the State Physical Culture and Sports Commission, it has been jointly supported by the General Administration of Sport and the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government since 2001. It has been selected continuously for the national Double First-Class initiative since 2017. In June 2023, with Ministry of Education approval, it was renamed Shanghai University of Sport.

The university maintains a socialist direction in education and upholds the motto, “Unity of Body and Mind, Inclusiveness and Striving for Excellence.” It carries the mission of developing sport, improving public fitness and promoting sports culture. It follows the fundamental principle of serving the lifelong development of teachers and students and an educational philosophy of integrating body and mind, advancing virtue and skills together, studying both humanities and sciences, and serving society. It focuses on the fundamental task of fostering virtue through education and develops an educational framework integrating moral, intellectual, physical, aesthetic and practical education.

Emphasizing service and contribution, the university concentrates on building a first-class applied institution with distinctive strengths. It aligns with national development strategies and Shanghai’s urban development strategy, responds to the needs of competitive sport, exercise and health, the sports industry and cultural development, and strengthens sports technology and interdisciplinary innovation across sport, medicine and engineering. It cultivates outstanding innovative talent and high-level versatile applied professionals with sporting strengths. It seeks to become a leader in exercise and health solutions, a global source of sports innovation and an international hub for communicating sports civilization, accelerating development into a world-class sports university with Chinese characteristics.

The Party and the state have consistently cared for and supported the university’s development. In recent years, General Secretary Xi Jinping visited the Papua New Guinea Training Center of its China Table Tennis College, replied to a letter from Papua New Guinean trainees based at the university, and inspected research and innovation projects by its faculty and students in the Zhangjiakou competition zone of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

The university has 3 campuses–Yangpu, Xuhui and Songjiang–and teaching sites at Jiangwan and Huangpu. It covers more than 1100 mu, with approximately 370000 square meters of buildings.

It gained master’s degree awarding authority in 1981 and became one of China’s first sports institutions authorized to award doctorates in 1986. It has developed a disciplinary system centered on sports science, with high-level interdisciplinary integration of science, medicine, literature, engineering, management, law and the arts. In the fifth national discipline evaluation and the second professional degree evaluation, both sports science and its professional degree in sport achieved excellent results. Sports science received the highest A+ rating in the fourth national discipline evaluation. It has 24 undergraduate programs, including 13 national, provincial or municipal first-class programs. Its 19 national and 34 provincial or municipal first-class undergraduate courses broadly cover all undergraduate programs. It offers master’s degrees in 5 first-level disciplines: sports science, psychology, journalism and communication, Marxist theory, and public health and preventive medicine. It also offers 7 professional master’s degree categories: sport, medical technology, tourism management, journalism and communication, applied psychology, business administration, and translation and interpreting. It has doctoral degree authorization in the first-level disciplines of sports science and psychology and a professional doctorate in sport. In addition to all second-level doctoral authorizations within sports science, it has independently established 5 second-level doctoral disciplines: sports management, sports engineering, sports rehabilitation, anti-doping studies and sports communication.

The university has a strong faculty of around 600 full-time teachers. To date, it is the only sports university in China with 2 teacher teams–Exercise and Health Science, and Digital and Intelligent Empowerment of Sports Technology Innovation–selected for the national Huang Danian-style university teacher team demonstration initiative. Two faculty and staff Party organizations have been named National Model Party Branches. Its faculty includes an international fellow of the US National Academy of Kinesiology (NAK), an independent board member of the International Testing Agency (ITA), a senior scientist at the Oregon Research Institute, chief scientists at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), former presidents of the American College of Sports Medicine and the National Academy of Kinesiology, world champions, and international- and national-level elite athletes, referees and technical officials. Many have been selected for Eastern Scholars, Pujiang Talents, Shuguang, Chenguang and Yangfan programs and have received honors including the Baosteel Outstanding Teacher Award.

Emphasizing both distinctive strengths and quality, and mutual reinforcement between discipline development and talent cultivation, the university advances integration of vocational and general education, science and education, and industry and education. In recent years, it has received 1 first prize in the National Teaching Achievement Awards. Across the three most recent award rounds in 2014, 2018 and 2022, it received 5 national and 27 Shanghai teaching achievement awards, covering higher, basic and vocational education. It was selected among Shanghai’s first key experimental universities for comprehensive ideological and political education courses and hosts a research base of the Shanghai Research Center for Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. Guided by AI for Sport, it is accelerating development of 5 micro-programs, including big data analysis, intelligent sports engineering and sports nutrition, alongside recently added programs such as exercise and public health and athletic performance development. It has 1 national and 1 Shanghai experimental teaching demonstration center and has established Yunrui Academy, a new model for educating outstanding innovative talent. Deepening integration of sport and education, it was among the first universities authorized to offer an undergraduate football program and has received approval for a National Demonstration Football School. It pioneered the world’s only higher education institution specializing exclusively in table tennis, China Table Tennis College, recognized by the International Table Tennis Federation as its highest college-level affiliated training base. It has jointly established the China Basketball College, Marathon College, Badminton College, Gymnastics College and Squash College with the Chinese Basketball Association, Chinese Athletics Association, Chinese Badminton Association, Chinese Gymnastics Association and Chinese Squash Association respectively. With the Chinese Gymnastics Association and the Chinese Trampoline and Acrobatic Sports Association, it established a national youth training base for gymnastics, trampoline and rhythmic gymnastics. It is a national high-level reserve sports talent base for middle- and long-distance running. Together with a prominent enterprise, it formed the Shenhua-SUS women’s football team, which won the second Asian University Sports Federation Football Asian Cup. In recent years, it has achieved good results at major events including the Asian Winter Games, Chengdu FISU World University Games, the first National Student (Youth) Games and Hangzhou Asian Games. It has educated internationally renowned coaches including Shi Zhihao, Sun Haiping, Chen Zhonghe, Wang Yuefang, Sun Li’an, Shen Fulin and Ma Liangxing. It has also achieved outstanding results in industry-education integration and innovation and entrepreneurship education, jointly establishing a modern industry school for exercise and health promotion with a Fortune Global 500 company. It is the first sports university to win a national gold medal in the Youth Red Dream Journey track of China’s Internet+ University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, and the only sports university to receive its Rural Revitalization Award.

The university leads in academic innovation. In recent years, it has received 3 National Science and Technology Progress Awards and a second prize in Shanghai’s 2024 Technological Invention Awards. Its numbers of National Natural Science Foundation and National Social Science Fund projects lead comparable institutions. It was the first sports university to receive a key National Natural Science Foundation project and has undertaken 14 major National Social Science Fund and Ministry of Education humanities and social science projects. It leads projects and undertakes research tasks in key National Key Research and Development Program initiatives of the Ministry of Science and Technology, including Science and Technology for the Winter Olympics, Active Health and Technological Responses to Aging, and Technological Support for Social Governance and Smart Society. It promotes the transformation of research and innovation through artificial intelligence and released China’s first sports AI foundation model. During the Paris Olympic cycle, it introduced “3D+AI” sports AI innovations to support national teams preparing and competing in diving, swimming, athletics, gymnastics, climbing and badminton. A project with the university as a core contributor was selected for the 2024 smart sports exemplary cases jointly released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the General Administration of Sport. It also received Shanghai funding for Leading Industry Innovation and Development (AI+) to promote high-quality industrial development. It is the only domestic sports university named a China Ice and Snow Technology Joint Research Institution. To date, the influence of its English-language Journal of Sport and Health Science has remained in the global top 2% in sports science. The journal received a nomination for the periodical prize in the Fifth China Publishing Government Awards and has ranked first for consecutive years among China’s most internationally influential academic journals in humanities and social sciences. Sports science, psychology and the Shanghai Anti-Doping Research Institute have been selected respectively as Shanghai Municipal Education Commission Class I peak, Class I plateau and Class IV peak disciplines. Its high-level research platforms include the National Doping Control Laboratory in Shanghai, located at the university; 4 provincial or ministerial key laboratories; 7 provincial or ministerial philosophy and social science bases, including the sports industry; and 1 Shanghai collaborative innovation center. It has also established joint laboratories with Nike, Baidu, SenseTime, Warrior, Yilijia, Anpel and other partners.

The university advances high-quality social services. To serve the development of a strong education system, it has established a strategic partnership with the China Student Sports Federation. It pioneered national models for evaluating physical literacy and fitness indices among Chinese children and adolescents, as well as youth sports skill level standards, providing important guidance for educational evaluation reform. To support a strong sporting nation, it participates fully in Olympic research and technical support, and hosts training bases for national teams including 3x3 basketball and skeleton. To support Healthy China, its Community Exercise and Health Instructor project has been widely praised, included in national and Shanghai 14th Five-Year Plans for sports development, and selected among Shanghai’s ten major medical reform innovations and national pilot initiatives integrating innovative prevention and control of major chronic diseases. Its exercise-based drug rehabilitation model was recognized by the Ministry of Justice and developed into a local standard. It hosts 1 high-level think tank of the General Administration of Sport, 1 Shanghai key think tank, 1 Shanghai university think tank and 1 Shanghai university Marxist theory think tank. It has led the drafting of important policies on building a strong sporting nation, fitness for all, the sports industry and five-year plans for China’s sports development. It actively serves high-quality integrated development in the Yangtze River Delta and hosts the region’s Sports Integration Research Center, Sports Integration Office and Sports Industry Cooperation Secretariat. It has China’s only national sports university science park.

The university is building a new center for preserving sports culture. It pioneered the establishment of the ITTF Museum and China Table Tennis Museum through a project with an international sports organization. It also has the world’s first museum presenting the full history and culture of martial arts, the Wushu Museum, selected for the second group of Shanghai university practice teaching bases for comprehensive ideological and political education. Its martial arts program has been selected as a national university base for preserving outstanding traditional Chinese culture. It has established an Institute for Intangible Cultural Heritage in Traditional Chinese Sports. Both the table tennis and martial arts museums are national sports science popularization bases. University founder Wu Yunrui was named a Shanghai Master of Social Sciences. The university has established China’s first university bookstore dedicated to sport and completed a Museum of Sports Education.

The university is creating a new pattern of open development. As of 2024, it had partnerships with more than 160 universities and institutions in 48 countries and regions. It has educated more than 1800 international students from over 60 countries. With International Olympic Committee approval, it established an Olympic Academy. Together with the International Testing Agency, it established the world’s first and China’s only ITA Academic Centre. With the Asian University Sports Federation, it created the first Asian university sports research and information network. China Table Tennis College has a European branch, a training base in Croatia and a training center in Papua New Guinea. The School of Wushu’s first overseas center was inaugurated in Canada. The university operates a Chinese-foreign cooperative education program in kinesiology with the University of Wyoming in the United States and has established a SUS-UW Overseas Center there. It established a Joint Research Center for Exercise and Public Health at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom and cooperates with Macao Polytechnic University on joint postgraduate training in sports science. (As of September 2025.)

Students from around the world are welcome to study at Shanghai University of Sport!