On September 7, 2025, the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council issued the Notice on the Adjustment, Revocation, and Establishment of Degree Programs for 2024. The master’s degree program in regional and area studies, proposed by the SFL at SWJTU, has been officially approved as a first-level discipline.

In recent years, the SFL has proactively aligned itself with national strategic needs for strengthened regional and area studies. Leveraging the SWJTU’s strengths in transportation and relying on its multilingual programs in English, German, Japanese, French, Russian, and others, the SFL has established several distinctive research platforms, including the American Studies Center, the European Studies Center, and the Center for China–Foreign Cultural Exchange Diagnostics. Since 2022, the SFL has also recruited master’s students specializing in area studies under the first-level discipline of Foreign Languages and Literature.

The approval of the regional and area studies master’s program marks a significant breakthrough in disciplinary development and represents a solid step forward in cultivating high-level, interdisciplinary talent. Based on SWJTU’s transportation-oriented academic strengths, the program will focus on theories and methods in regional and area studies, transportation studies, European and American studies, and Southeast Asian studies. It aims to cultivate “regional and area specialists” to support national initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative and China’s high-speed rail “going global” strategy.

The SFL will take this approval as an opportunity to continue strengthening discipline development, improving talent training quality, and building a high-impact base for area studies research and talent cultivation.