Shanghai Customs College is a full-time general institution of higher learning approved by the Ministry of Education with qualifications for higher education enrollment. It is directly affiliated with the General Administration of Customs of the People's Republic of China. China's customs higher education has a history of more than a hundred years. In 1908, the Qing government established a tax school in Beijing (later renamed the Taxation School and moved to Shanghai). The school was one of the first schools in the world to engage in higher professional customs education. After the founding of New China, Shanghai Customs School was established in 1953. In 1980, with the approval of the State Council, it was upgraded to Shanghai Customs College. In 1996, it was renamed Shanghai Customs College. In March 2007, the Ministry of Education approved the establishment of Shanghai Customs College on the basis of Shanghai Customs College. In December 2012, the college was officially approved by the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council as a "Talent Training Project to Serve the National Special Needs" – a bachelor's degree-granting unit to carry out a pilot work unit for cultivating professional master's degree graduates.
The college currently has five teaching departments (departments), including the Department of Customs Management, Department of Economics and Business Administration, Department of Law, Department of Foreign Languages, and Department of Basics; it offers 7 undergraduate majors including Customs Management, Logistics Management, Auditing, International Business, Taxation, Law, and English, and a master's degree in taxation, covering 4 disciplines including management, economics, law, and literature. Among them, the customs management major is a special major under national control, and the law and taxation majors are the second and third batch of characteristic major construction sites of higher education institutions of the Ministry of Education respectively. There are currently 1,833 full-time students on campus, including 1,803 undergraduates and 30 graduate students.
The main mission of the college is to be based on the customs and oriented to the society, and to cultivate compound, applied, foreign-related high-quality customs management professionals who meet the needs of customs and economic and social development, as well as foreign economic and trade professionals who serve port logistics and international business. And actively carry out customs theoretical research and international exchanges. The college also undertakes tasks such as continuing education, knowledge updating and business training for middle and senior cadres in the customs system; and in accordance with the division of labor of the World Customs Organization (WCO) and the requirements of countries and regions in the Asia-Pacific region, it gradually assumes the task of training customs personnel in the region and fulfills corresponding international obligations.
The college currently has 140 full-time teachers, including 12 professors and 45 associate professors. The proportion of teachers with senior professional and technical positions is 41%. There are 38 teachers with doctorate degrees, 78 teachers with master's degrees, and the proportion of teachers with postgraduate degrees is 83%. The teaching staff has a reasonable structure and a high level of teaching and scientific research. The college has a Customs Management Research Institute and a research center on international customs issues, customs law, customs risk management, tariffs, and customs declaration. It closely integrates customs reform and development and conducts scientific research on hot and difficult issues faced in bilateral, multilateral, and regional customs international cooperation. In 2009, the college was approved to establish the Shanghai Social Science Innovation Research Base and the Shanghai Institute of Development Strategy Studio. The academic journal "Customs and Economic and Trade Research" is published publicly.
The college has always highlighted the "university spirit" education with the connotation of "patriotism, openness and erudition", focusing on the all-round development of students. Comprehensive quality education and quasi-military management of students run through the entire process of talent training; the college has always focused on teaching, scientific research, and training, with subject and professional construction as the leader, changing the concept of education and teaching, deepening education and teaching reform, innovating talent training models, implementing comprehensive quality education with moral education as the core, cultivating students' practical ability and innovative spirit, promoting students' personalized development, and comprehensively improving the quality of undergraduate talent training.
The college is located in Pudong New Area, Shanghai, covering an area of 521 acres. In accordance with the Ministry of Education's standards for general institutions of higher learning, the college has modern teaching buildings, libraries and advanced ATM campus networks. The classrooms are equipped with multimedia teaching conditions; it also has digital reading rooms, audio-visual rooms, cultural and entertainment complex buildings, tennis courts, swimming pools, gymnasiums and other supporting facilities to create a good learning and living environment for students.
