The Shanghai Blood Center (SBC) was established in 1954 and has been one of the largest blood distribution and service organizations in China since then.  SBC collects 285,000 units of whole blood (200ml/unit) and over 22,000 units of aphaeresis platelets annually.  SBC is dedicated to providing the safest possible blood, blood products and transfusion services to more than 160 hospitals and over 10 million people in urban areas.

SBC is home to the Shanghai Institute of Blood Transfusion (SIBT). The institute, with 5 research laboratories, is mainly engaged in basic and applied research of hematology and transfusion medicine. Among them, the Blood Group Reference Laboratory has been nominated as the National Blood Group Reference Laboratory by the Ministry of Health since 1985. The Immunogenetic Laboratory is designated as the matching lab for Chinese Bone Marrow Registry in Shanghai; and by Dec. 2002  over 27,000 donors had been typed and registered and they now account for 2/3 of the total donor pool in the country.

SBC was awarded the  ISO 9002 certificate by the National Bureau in 1999, the first of all blood transfusion services in China.  SBC's mission is to provide safe, sufficient, low-cost blood components and transfusion services to patients, hospitals and donors in the serviced area.

SBC has over 400 employees, 120 of them have senior and intermediate professional titles and 20 of them have M.D and/or Ph D degrees. WHO designated SBC as its Collaborating Center for Development and Research for the Services of Blood Transfusion in 1988. SBC is a corporate member of ISBT.

- Help in achieving ICBS' goals by continuing to train personnel from Chinese blood banks covering a wide range of subjects related to all operations in transfusion service. SBC is one of four blood centers in China designated by the Ministry of Health to train blood transfusion service staff from all blood banks in China.

- Contribute towards providing training services to international trainees, especially those from Asia or the Western Pacific region. SBC will provide a limited number of tuition-waived training places annually based on the decision of the Education Committee.

- Provide consultancy services as needed within China and other neighboring Asian countries as well as countries of the Western Pacific region.

- Help, encourage and follow-up with the Chinese manufacturers producing blood screening reagents in an effort to make them participate in the evaluation of their blood screening test kits by the ICBS International Blood Screening Test Evaluation Center.