Shunde, the district of Foshan that Chinese industry knows as the home of Midea and one of the world’s furniture capitals, gave its name to a university that carries its manufacturing DNA. Shunde Polytechnic University was approved in June 2025, growing out of a vocational college founded in 1999, and its first major donors were the Hong Kong tycoons Lee Shau Kee and Cheng Yu-tung, joined by local companies Midea and Galanz.
The college had spent its first two decades as one of China’s flagship vocational schools, entering the first Double High program in 2019, passing the final evaluation with an excellent rating in 2024 and being reselected for the second round in 2025. The university now enrolls about 16,000 full-time students across 14 undergraduate programs and 47 diploma programs.
Its undergraduate programs map directly onto Shunde’s industries: intelligent manufacturing, robotics, refrigeration and air conditioning, new materials, industrial internet and artificial intelligence, with a cooking and catering management program that grew out of the district’s claim to be the food capital of the world. Students have won 20 international skill prizes, including the German Red Dot design award, and more than 300 national first prizes, and the university has led nine national teaching achievement awards.
Partnerships with Midea, KUKA and LESSO feed order-based classes that have produced nearly 100,000 graduates with an employment rate above 98 percent. The university runs five overseas vocational bases in Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and beyond, has trained more than 15,000 foreign employees of Chinese companies in 40-plus countries, and co-built a Guangdong-Aachen Industry 4.0 center with RWTH Aachen University.
Shunde’s philanthropists gave the college its buildings in 1999, and the college has returned the favor: nearly 100,000 graduates, employment above 98 percent, and a curriculum written with the district’s own factories. The university is the district, taught.
Data Source: SDPT Official Website (as of 2026)
