Supported by the Chinese and French ministries of education and co-established by Beihang University and Le Groupe des Ecoles Centrales (a group of five central schools in Paris, Lyon, Lille, Nantes and Marseille),l'École Centrale de Pékin of Beihang University (hereafter abbreviated as the School) has enrolled students since 2005. It aims to cultivate international engineers by introducing a French educational system for training engineers and relying on Beihang University’s strengths in aeronautics, astronautics and communications. Now part of Beihang University and Le Groupe des Ecoles Centrales, the School has been jointly administered by representatives from Beihang University as well as its partnership universities and corporate partners. Since it is a pioneer in the Sino-French higher education cooperation on engineering, the School has been selected among the first group by the Chinese Ministry of Education to join its Program for Training Outstanding Engineers. It has also become China’s first institution to pass accreditation by CTI (Commission des titres d’ingénieurs) and EUR-ACE (Accréditation des formations d’ingénieurs en Europe), thus qualifying itself to award the French diploma of engineer. The School has led a team to form a Sino-French Educational Cooperation Alliance as well as an Alliance of Beijing Universities in a Program for Training Outstanding Engineers, with the former involving 17 universities across China and the latter 16 universities in Beijing. It has also established the French Studies Center, a national-level research base for studying regions and countries, as well as an international base for innovation and training in terms of industrial science and technology.

As an experimental field for cultivating international talents, the School will continue to carry forward its management philosophy – development, opening up, cooperation and win-win. It will first build itself to be a world-class school for training international engineers and provide a guiding and exemplary role in the reform of China’s higher engineering education, through leveraging a plan that aims to advance the establishment of model internationalized schools in colleges and universities and being geared toward world-class certification and training systems.