The Proposed \"PolyU Foshan Campus\": Origins, Stagnation, and Status

RMB 30.7 billion, RMB 3.07 billion, RMB 6 billion — three wildly divergent investment figures, all pointing to a single "campus" that, to this day, has no walls, no gates, and not a single enrolled student. This is the "Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Foshan)": a project for which a framework agreement was signed in 2019, which was once written into Guangdong Province's key development plans, yet for the six years since has been met with a recurring chorus of "no construction plans at present" from the Foshan Municipal Education Bureau. This article sets out the claims of all parties chronologically, without drawing conclusions.

This document belongs to the "PolyU WILD · 09 Internationalisation" module. For PolyU's core Greater Bay Area research layout (Shenzhen Research Institute, Daya Bay and other MTRI networks), see the companion document mainland-and-gba.md; for "Belt and Road" collaborations, see mainland-and-gba-3.md.

⚠ This section addresses an issue that is prone to misinterpretation: the name "Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Foshan)" circulates in public discourse and some encyclopaedic entries, but upon multi-source verification, this campus has not been built to date, has never admitted students, and remains in prolonged stagnation.

# I. Origins and Planning Claims: 2019–2020

According to multiple reports, the origins of PolyU's collaboration with Foshan on establishing a campus are as follows:

• 2019: PolyU and the Foshan municipal government signed a cooperation framework agreement, proposing the establishment of a branch campus in Foshan.
• Early 2020: The project was reportedly listed in Guangdong Province’s 2020 key development preparatory project plan^※; the Wikipedia entry, citing reports, states that the plan estimated a total investment of approximately RMB 30.7 billion and a campus gross floor area of roughly 2 million square metres (as relayed by Foshan Daily on 2020-01-10, Sing Tao Daily, and others). If accurate, this figure would make the project far larger in scale than PolyU's existing main campus in Hung Hom.

⚠ Discrepancies in reported figures: The "RMB 30.7 billion" figure cited in the Wikipedia entry differs by a factor of ten from the "approximately RMB 3.07 billion (approx. HK$3.43 billion)" relayed by some Hong Kong media (e.g., Bastille Post^※). This is suspected to be a difference in unit or reporting perspective between different reports, or a transcription error. Additionally, a 2023 mainland financial self-media account proposed a "potential turnaround" figure of a "total investment of approximately RMB 6 billion" (per a Sohu repost^※). All three figures are relayed claims; this site cannot determine which one is accurate, and so presents them side-by-side, recording the discrepancy without adopting any as definitive. This is the primary reason this article's "credibility" is tagged as "Disputed / Counter-evidence exists" — on the most basic metric of investment scale, the relayed accounts do not align.

# II. Stagnation and Official Responses: 2022–2023

According to multiple reports, the project encountered obstacles after the signing, and the public responses from the Foshan Municipal Education Bureau have been particularly blunt:

• According to a Hong Kong media report (May 2022), the Foshan Municipal Education Bureau responded that the two sides "have differences," and the designated land "has not been explicitly designated as educational construction land, and there are no construction plans at present" (per Bastille Post^※). The report also mentioned that one of the three proposed land parcels originally contained non-educational buildings, presenting a land-use classification issue — in other words, even the land situation had not been sorted out.
• The Wikipedia entry cites responses from the Foshan Municipal Education Bureau on the "Leaders' Message Board" of People.cn (May and November 2022): the two sides "failed to reach consensus on core issues such as campus site selection and scale," and the pandemic had created communication barriers, resulting in "no substantive progress on the project, and no construction plans at this stage" (as quoted by the Wikipedia entry^※).
• May 2023: Jiemian News reported that the incumbent Vice-Chancellor and President of PolyU stated in an interview that after PolyU and Foshan signed the framework agreement in 2019, factors such as "the pandemic and changes in leadership led to its temporary shelving, but the direction remains unchanged" (per Jiemian News^※). In the same interview, the Vice-Chancellor also mentioned that PolyU "hopes to establish a second campus in the Northern Metropolis (of Hong Kong)," planning to relocate over 2,000 doctoral students and over 2,000 R&D personnel there — this is a separate concept within Hong Kong territory and has no direct relation to the Foshan project; the two should not be conflated.

The gap between the official positions of the two localities is worth noting: the Foshan Municipal Education Bureau emphasises "land use undecided, no construction plans," while the PolyU administration stresses "direction unchanged, temporarily shelved" — one leaning towards "basically no deal struck," the other towards "still waiting for the right moment." While not outright contradictory, their points of emphasis are clearly different.

# III. "Turnaround" Rumours and the Naming Issue: 2023

• In the latter half of 2023, some mainland financial self-media accounts published reports along the lines of "Foshan to add a new university, bringing in PolyU still has a chance" (per Sohu repost^※). This represents unofficial/self-media claims, with no official confirmation seen; this site merely records it as a lead.
• Although the name "Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Foshan)" appears in some encyclopaedias and early planning documents, as of the compilation date of this site (June 2026), this campus has no independent legal entity, no physical campus, and no student enrolment record. Its nature differs from institutions that are actually operating, such as CUHK (Shenzhen) or HKUST (Guangzhou). A university name existing before its campus does is a common phenomenon in mainland new-university preparation projects — the signboard goes up, but the physical entity does not necessarily follow.

# IV. Distinction from "Foshan Research Collaboration": 2025–2026

A distinction must be drawn: PolyU indeed has ongoing collaboration with Foshan, but it pertains to research/industry-university joint centres, not a degree-granting campus. Intriguingly, this track has progressed with remarkable speed, in stark contrast to the six-year deadlock on the teaching campus:

• December 2025: PolyU and a technology company under the Foshan Transportation Group signed a collaboration framework agreement^※ in Foshan, focusing on transport materials, structures, and technology cooperation.
• 7 February 2026: Just over two months after signing, the two parties held a plaque-unveiling ceremony on the PolyU campus, formally establishing the "Joint Research Centre for Technology and Innovation"^※. They launched seven collaborative projects (covering hybrid structural components, digital twin bridge monitoring, road surface defect detection, advanced pavement materials, soil remediation, concrete testing methods, etc.). The ceremony was attended by PolyU's Vice-Chancellor and President, Senior Vice-President (Research and Innovation), Dean of the Faculty of Construction and Environment, and representatives from the Foshan transportation side.

The two-month span from agreement signing to plaque unveiling stands in marked contrast to the teaching campus that, six years on, still has "no construction plans" — a speed differential that is quite telling. It provides peripheral support for the judgement made at the end of Part I: what PolyU is truly adept at, and truly able to push forward on the mainland, are research commercialisation projects, not stand-alone degree-granting campuses.

In other words: the "Foshan Campus (teaching)" and the "Foshan Joint Research Centre (research)" are two different things. The former remains stagnant/unbuilt to date; the latter was actually established in 2026 as an industry-university research collaboration and does not confer degrees. This site lists them separately to avoid conflation.

# V. Summary (Non-Conclusive)

Synthesising the four sections above, the known information can be categorised into three types:

• Confirmable facts: PolyU and Foshan signed an educational framework agreement in 2019; the project was once included in Guangdong provincial plans; it subsequently stalled due to site/scale disagreements, the pandemic, leadership changes, etc.; official sources (Foshan Municipal Education Bureau) have repeatedly stated "no construction plans at present"; the PolyU administration states that the "direction remains unchanged, will be announced in due course."
• Unverifiable/Disputed: The investment amount (RMB 30.7 billion / 3.07 billion / 6 billion coexist); whether it will ultimately be restarted and its timeline.
• Clear Distinction: The 2025–2026 "Foshan Transportation Joint Research Centre" is a research collaboration and not a teaching campus, and its pace of progress operates on an entirely different scale.

To date, whether and when the "PolyU Foshan Campus" will materialise remains inconclusive. When placed within the context of PolyU's overall mainland footprint (see Section 9 of mainland-and-gba.md), this is not actually surprising: PolyU has never truly operated an independent degree-granting campus on the mainland. For Foshan to become the exception, the hurdles to overcome are far higher than a single framework agreement.