Moxibustion, the ancient practice of burning herbal material near the skin, got a modern upgrade at Jiangxi University of Chinese Medicine: the school’s heat-sensitive moxibustion technique, which locates spots on the body where heat is especially felt, won a national science and technology second prize and filled a long-standing gap in Jiangxi’s medical research record. The university even runs the world’s first heat-sensitive moxibustion hospital, and it has carried the technique to Portugal, Tunisia and Bulgaria.
The school was founded in 1959 and is co-built by the education ministry, the national administration of traditional Chinese medicine and the Jiangxi government. It has grown into a university whose research reaches from ancient herbal recipes to international standards, and it has long been an early stop for foreign students: it was among the first institutions in China approved to receive international students.
Three campuses covering some 2,000 mu, about 133 hectares, serve more than 23,000 full-time students through 37 undergraduate programs, six of them national first-class programs. Two first-level doctoral disciplines in Chinese medicine and pharmacy, a professional doctorate in Chinese medicine, six first-level master’s disciplines and eight professional master’s categories anchor the graduate side, alongside 18 key disciplines of the national administration of traditional Chinese medicine and three provincial first-class disciplines.
Four disciplines, from pharmacology and toxicology to clinical medicine, sit in the ESI global top 1 percent. Research infrastructure includes a national key laboratory, a national engineering research center for solid-dosage manufacturing technology and two more national-level platforms, plus 59 provincial-and-ministerial ones. The school’s teaching model, a practice-based program it calls double-wei education, has won a national first prize for teaching achievement, the only one Jiangxi has ever received at that level, and it has led the drafting of three international standards for Chinese medicine published by the ISO.
Healthcare and industry meet on campus. Its first affiliated hospital, the Jiangxi Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine, is the province’s largest top-tier Chinese medicine hospital and has been rated A-plus in the national assessment of public TCM hospitals for three years running. Its best-known corporate offspring is the Jiangzhong pharmaceutical group, a national high-tech enterprise created by the university that has put 16 of its developed products past one billion yuan in annual sales; the university’s production technology and equipment for Chinese medicine have been adopted by more than 100 companies.
What began as a single technique has become a network: a Confucius Institute with Semyung University in South Korea, a center for foreign dignitaries to experience Chinese medicine, seven Sino-Portuguese forums on traditional medicine, and a Sino-Portuguese joint laboratory, the only Sino-European joint laboratory among Chinese medicine universities. Sixty years on, the school that gave moxibustion a modern method is still exporting what its campus grows.
Data Source: JXUTCM Official Website (as of 2026)
