Shandong Foreign Trade Vocational College is affiliated with the Department of Commerce of Shandong Province, and is the university with the longest history of foreign trade vocational education in Shandong Province, a national quality university and a famouscollegewith characteristics of Shandong Province. It is the director of the Steering Committee of Foreign Language Teaching in Vocational Colleges and Universities of the Ministry of Education and the deputy director of the National Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Committee, and the leader of Shandong International Business Vocational Education Group and Shandong Cross-border E-Commerce Industry and Education Union.

The specialties of the college are closely connected with the regional open economy and foreign-related high-end service industry, and have formed the distinctive "foreign" schooling characteristics of foreign trade, foreign language, foreign transportation and outsourcing. There are more than 130 full-time foreign language teachers in English, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, German, French, Arabic and Russian, and 8 EU English simultaneous interpreters.

In 2012, the university became the only comprehensive implementation agency of the national foreign aid training program in Shandong Province. As of June 2022, more than 270 foreign aid training programs have been undertaken, with more than 9,000 trainees from more than 130 developing countries participating in the training. Overseas training centers have been established in 12 countries, including Sudan, Costa Rica, Cuba, etc. In 2019, the College became the largest university in China in terms of the scale of foreign aid training. Through the training our institute has signed cooperation agreements with relevant institutions in more than 50 countries, including Dominica and Sri Lanka. Our project management and online training were commended by the Ministry of Commerce Training Center and promoted to national contractors in the form of briefings. 1,090 participants from 93 countries were trained in the "Cross-border E-Commerce Capacity Building for Poverty Alleviation and Sustainable Development (Online) Training Program for Youth in Developing Countries" organized by the College in March 2022. Deputy Permanent Representative of China to the United Nations, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Dai Bing, and Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations and Deputy Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme Usha Rao Monari attended the opening ceremony, which was highly praised by the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation.

In 2018, with the approval of the provincial education department and the Department of Commerce, the college took the lead in establishing the "One Belt, One Road" International Alliance for Vocational Education; in 2019, it will build an experimental base for vocational education to serve the "One Belt, One Road" with the Vocational and Technical Education Center of the Ministry of Education;in 2021, it will establish the China-Shanghai Cooperation Organization Economic and Trade Industry and Education Alliance with the China-Shanghai Cooperation Organization Local Economic and Trade Cooperation Demonstration Zone and Qingdao Education Bureau; the college has maintained close cooperation with many universities, enterprises and foreign business organizations of SCO countries and countries along the "One Belt and One Road".