China's first wholly foreign-owned college to settle in Hainan FTP

According to Hainan Provincial Party Committee Deep Reform Office (Free Trade Office), on August 13, Germany’s Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Hainan Provincial Government to independently run a college in the Yangpu Economic Development Zone of Hainan Free Trade Port, which plans to enroll its first batch of students in 2021. This is not only China’s first institution of higher education wholly owned by a foreign university, but also the first educational program set up by a German public university on its own abroad.

The college will cultivate high-quality and international talent in the province while at the same time promoting the establishment of high-quality German enterprises in Hainan. It will offer bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economic information, enterprise economy, economic engineering, intelligent logistics, smart technology, mechatronic integration, application automation, data science, industrial design and service, business management, project management and other subjects.

Located in North Rhine-Westphalia, Bielefeld University is the largest university of applied sciences in Germany’s economically developed Ostwestfalen-Lippe region. It offers 37 undergraduate programs, 25 master's programs and several vocational educational programs. It is the first university in Germany to put forward the concept of “practice-embedded applied higher education", and is the leading university of public universities that provides technical support for German industrial intelligent manufacturing clusters.