China’s mining industry had no university of its own until 1909, when a coal-mining school opened its doors in a coal town in central Henan. That school, renamed many times over the decades, is today the first mining institute in China and the oldest university in the province. A century and more later, its focus has widened from coal seams to safety science and engineering, a discipline in which it holds a national A rating that no other university in Henan can match.
The school’s early years were entangled with the country’s industrial awakening. After its 1909 founding as the Jiaozuo Coal Mining School, it passed through a succession of identities, from Fu Zhong Mining University to a private Jiaozuo institute of technology, to the National Northwestern Institute of Technology during the war years, and later to the Jiaozuo Mining Institute, before taking its present name in 2004. Along the way it was led or taught by figures who shaped modern Chinese industry, including the educator Cai Yuanpei, the mining magnate Sun Yueqi and the geologist Weng Wenhao.
Academically, HPU is built on engineering strength. Seven ESI top-1-percent disciplines lead the map, topped by engineering in the top 0.1 percent, and its safety science and engineering program carries the national A rating. Mining engineering places in ShanghaiRanking’s global top 30. It offers 7 first-level doctoral and 29 first-level master’s programs, 85 undergraduate majors including 24 national first-class programs, and runs 6 post-doctoral stations.
Its campuses span Jiaozuo and Zhengzhou, with 24 schools, more than 51,000 students, nearly 7,600 of them postgraduates, and 3,315 faculty members, of whom 1,657 hold doctorates. Its libraries hold 3.85 million printed volumes, and its four sports venues have hosted national college basketball and football competitions.
Research output has kept pace with the scale. It has undertaken 1,008 national research projects, including 878 funded by the National Natural Science Foundation, and has won 14 national second prizes in science and technology. It holds 3,551 granted patents and runs 75 national and provincial research platforms, from a state-local joint engineering laboratory to a key laboratory cultivation base.
International links reach 124 universities and institutions in 38 countries and regions. HPU runs a Sino-foreign cooperative institution, the Limerick International College, plus four ministry-approved joint undergraduate programs, and its research collaborations span mining safety, materials and computing.
In 117 years, close to 500,000 graduates have passed through the university, among them a long line of academicians of the Chinese academies, including the materials scientist Shi Changxu. Its motto, “Integrity and Responsibility,” still frames the bargain the school has kept since the mining town days: give China engineers it can trust, above and below ground.
Data Source: HPU Official Website (as of 2026)
