Here is an outline of what is already a long story between China and ourselves.

In 1980, Centrale Lyon welcomed its first Chinese students on a doctoral engineering program. (More than 30 of them have now gone on to defend their theses.) As of 1991, co-operation and research agreements between the School's laboratories and those of Chinese universities gave an added dimension to these arrangements.

Centrale Lyon was behind the "4+4" accords which, since 1996, have tied the 4 Ecoles Centrales with 4 prestigious Chinese universities : Tsinghua in Beijing, and Jiaotong in Shanghai, Xi'an and Chengdu, with student exchanges and a double degree program.

And, as an illustration of just how successful our policy of global opening has been and the degree of recognition we are enjoying in China : in 2001, Centrale Lyon became the first European institution to join the greatest Chinese universities on the Shenzhen High Technology Campus.


Finally, SNECMA - a world leader in aerospace construction - relies on the skills and experience of Centrale Lyon to back up its involvement in engineering training and research in China. (Left: the 2003 promotion of the Centrale Lyon - SNECMA partnership)