Founded in 1951 as the First Military Medical University of the People’s Liberation Army, named a national key university in 1979, and transferred to Guangdong Province in 2004 under its present name, Southern Medical University keeps one distinction from its military years: it is the only independent medical university in China offering an eight-year clinical medicine program.
It is also the only medical school among the first five high-level universities designated by Guangdong Province, and one of the country’s first eight universities approved for the eight-year medical track. Five national key disciplines and 15 ESI top-1-percent subjects, with clinical medicine, pharmacology and toxicology, and biology and biochemistry in the top 1 per mille, put the university 46th nationally in the ESI overall ranking.
A national key laboratory, a national clinical research center and more than 130 other platforms at national and provincial level support a research effort that has won 30 national science and technology awards. The university has also led national major projects in infectious disease control across three consecutive five-year plans, a rare record.
Medical education extends into a hospital system: eight directly affiliated hospitals and 13 grade-A tertiary institutions with about 22,500 beds handle some 30 million outpatient visits a year. Alumni have risen to the top of the profession, with four graduates elected to the Chinese academies of sciences and engineering.
Internationally the university keeps ties with 97 universities and medical institutions in 29 countries and regions, and since 1987 it has run national aid programs that have trained more than 4,000 medical professionals from 124 countries, a tradition that dates to its military years.
Ask what remains of the First Military Medical University and the answer is not in a museum: it is in the eight-year curriculum, the 13 tertiary hospitals and the four academicians among the alumni. Southern Medical University changed its uniform, not its calling.
Data Source: SMU Official Website (as of 2026)
