Sun Yat-sen University

Sun Yat-sen University was founded in 1924 by Sun Yat-sen and is the leading university in southern China, part of Project 985 and Project 211. It has around 32,220 undergraduates, among the largest undergraduate bodies of any Chinese research university. It operates five campuses across three cities: Guangzhou, Zhuhai and Shenzhen. Those are separate cities in the Pearl River Delta with different living costs and different programme ranges, and which campus a programme runs at should be established before anything else. The university belongs to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao University Alliance, which links it to institutions across the Greater Bay Area including Hong Kong. For a student weighing eventual employment in the region, that integration is practical rather than symbolic. Guangzhou is a Cantonese-speaking city, but teaching is in Mandarin and the HSK tests Mandarin, so Cantonese is not required for study.