History
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the East China office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (中共中央华东局) and the government of the Shanghai Municipality decided to establish an institute for higher education in Russian studies to cultivate qualified diplomats and translators for international affairs. With the support of Chen Yi (陈毅), the mayor of Shanghai, the Shanghai Russian School (上海俄文学校) was officially established on December 1949. Jiang Chunfang (姜椿芳), one of the most famous Russian translators in China and the first chief editor of the Encyclopedia of China was appointed as the school's first president.
In 1950, the department of English was established and the college was incorporated as the foreign language school affiliated to the East China People's Revolution University (华东人民革命大学). The department of oriental language and literature was founded in April, 1951 and languages as Burmese, Vietnamese, Indonesian had respectively been introduced to teaching.
Later in 1952, a nationwide restructuring of institutes of higher education began in China, and the department of oriental language and literature was incorporated into Peking University. The college was renamed as Shanghai Russian College that specialise in teaching Russian language. The university was used to be widely known as Shanghai Foreign Language Institute (上海外国语学院) since its expansion in 1956 and became a national key university approved by the State Council in 1963 with the department of Russian, English (re-established), French, German, Japanese, Arabic and Spanish.
Since 1978, the university has strengthened its teaching and research in foreign languages and started to launch multidisciplinary programmes, which are categorised into three types, namely comprehensive programs (language + specialty), bilingual programs (English + another foreign language) and professional programs (English + a profession).
Approved by the Ministry of Education in 1994, it was officially renamed as Shanghai International Studies University (上海外国语大学). In the same year, it was listed as one of the first colleges and universities jointly supervised by the national Ministry of Education and the Municipality of Shanghai. In 1996, SISU passed the evaluation process of Project 211 directed by the Ministry of Education, and became one of the nation’s “100 key universities for the 21st Century.”
Read more about this topic: Shanghai International Studies University
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