Overview

University Overview

Among the “high-level universities with major development support in Guangdong Province”, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (GDUFS) is a prestigious institution of higher learning with distinctive international characteristics. It is an important base in South China for international talent cultivation and studies of foreign languages and cultures, global economic governance, foreign-related rule of law, and international communication of Chinese culture.

Embracing the values of excellence, integrity, inclusiveness and self-confidence, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies is committed to its motto “Pursuit of Integrity, Practice and Cross-cultural Learning” so that every student here is cultivating an academic ethos of virtue, diligence, practicality, and noble ambitions.

The University has 2 postdoctoral research centers, 3 Category I Discipline PhD Programs, 13 Category I Discipline master’s programs, and 17 professional graduate programs, delivering quality tertiary education from bachelor’s, master’s, PhD programs to postdoc research. With 28 foreign languages available among its current 68 undergraduate programs, the University is the only one in South China that offers the greatest variety of foreign language programs.

In recent rounds of evaluation by the Ministry of Education (MOE), the University has been ranked among the top universities in China in the field of foreign languages and literature. In 2021, GDUFS was recognized as a “high-level university with major development support” under Guangdong Province’s higher education enhancement program, in which five of its academic disciplines were recognized as “disciplines with major development support”. In the social sciences (general) category GDUFS ranked top 1% worldwide according to the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) Global Ranking.

Brief History

The University was a merger in 1995 of Guangzhou Institute of Foreign Languages (GIFL) and Guangzhou Institute of Foreign Trade (GIFT). Directly administered by the Ministry of Education, GIFL was founded in November 1964 (with student enrolment since July, 1965) and GIFT was established in December 1980, directly administered by the Ministry of Commerce. It had its present form by merging the two in May 1995, with Guangdong College of Finance and Economics incorporated into the University in October 2008. In September 2020, the GDUFS Huangpu Institute (Graduate School) was established in the Sino-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City.

Our Vision

Committed to pursuing excellence and high quality development to be among the first class on this new journey of the new era, we focus on our six major projects of excellence in student education, fields of study, faculty strength, external cooperation, cultural development and systemic governance respectively, so as to, by 2025, make GDUFS a well-respected university of high academic standing with distinctive features of internationalization that will live up to the expectations of the country, the society and the general public.