UNIVERSITIES

Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications: The Wartime Radio Class That Connected Modern China

Japan’s army had occupied much of eastern China when, deep in the Shandong anti-Japanese base area, the Communist Party set up a small postal training class to keep military communications running. That class became the Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications. Eighty-four years later, that same institution launched the “NJUPT Internet of Things” satellite into orbit from the Yellow Sea, placed 6 disciplines among the world’s top 1 percent on ESI rankings, and earned the reputation as the cradle of…

UNIVERSITIES

Shanghai Conservatory of Music: China’s First Music School, Still Composing the Canon

Before 1927, there was no institution in China where a young musician could study composition, musicology, or performance as an academic discipline. That changed on November 27 of that year, when the educator Cai Yuanpei and the composer Xiao Youmei founded the National Conservatory of Music in Shanghai — the country’s first institution of higher music education. Nearly a century later, the Shanghai Conservatory of Music remains the benchmark for musical training in China, a Double First-Class institution that has…

UNIVERSITIES

Shanghai University of Sport: The First Sports University in China

If a university’s name carries its ambition, then the 2023 renaming of Shanghai Institute of Physical Education to Shanghai University of Sport tells the story. The Ministry of Education approval transformed a specialized institute into a comprehensive university — one of only a handful of sport-focused universities in China. The institution behind that new name opened in 1952 as the East China Institute of Physical Education, the first higher education school of its kind founded after 1949. Over seven decades,…

UNIVERSITIES

Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine: Ancient Medicine Meets Shanghai’s Tech Frontier

At the heart of Pudong’s Zhangjiang Science City — Shanghai’s designated answer to Silicon Valley — sits a university dedicated to a medical tradition that predates modern pharmacology by two millennia. Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine was founded in 1956 as one of the first four TCM institutions established after 1949. But unlike most TCM schools, which grew in cities with classical medical lineages, SHUTCM was planted deliberately in an innovation district. That location defines its character: it bridges…

UNIVERSITIES

Central University of Finance and Economics: The Tax School That Grew Into China’s Financial Backbone

Founded on November 6, 1949, as the North China School of Taxation under the Ministry of Finance, Central University of Finance and Economics is one of the oldest financial and economic universities in the People’s Republic of China. It evolved through the Central School of Taxation, the Central Institute of Public Finance, and the Central Institute of Finance and Economics, adopting its current name in 1996. Now directly under the Ministry of Education and jointly supported by the Ministry of…

UNIVERSITIES

Communication University of China: The Broadcasting Class That Built China’s Media

Founded in 1954 as a broadcasting training class under the direct care of Premier Zhou Enlai and other senior leaders, Communication University of China was the first media-focused institution established by the Communist Party of China after 1949. For its first 50 years, CUC operated as the Beijing Broadcasting Institute before adopting its current name in 2004. Now a Double First-Class university with two first-class disciplines — journalism and communication, and theater and film studies — CUC operates 21 teaching…

UNIVERSITIES

Beijing Foreign Studies University: A Cave School and China’s Ambassadors

Beijing Foreign Studies University started in a cave classroom in Yan’an in 1941, when the Russian Language Team of the Chinese People’s Anti-Japanese Military and Political College began training translators in a cave classroom in Yan’an. That humble squad evolved into the Foreign Languages School of the Central Military Commission, then the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute in 1954 (after merging with the Beijing Russian Institute in 1959), and finally BFSU in 1994. Now directly under the Ministry of Education, the…

UNIVERSITIES

Beijing Normal University: The Blueprint for Modern Chinese Education

When the Imperial University of Peking opened a Normal College in 1902, it did more than establish a new school — it drew the blueprint for modern Chinese education itself. No institution had ever been tasked with training teachers for an entire nation before. Over the decades that followed, that college became Beijing Normal University, absorbing Peking Women’s Normal University in 1931 and Fu Jen Catholic University in 1952, growing into the template that virtually every normal university in China…

UNIVERSITIES

Beijing University of Chinese Medicine: Taking TCM to the World

Founded in 1956 as Beijing College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine was among the first traditional Chinese medicine institutions approved by the State Council. Designated a national key university in 1960 and renamed in 1993, BUCM merged with the Beijing Acupuncture and Orthopedics College in 2000 to form the comprehensive TCM university it is today. The only Chinese medicine university with three Double First-Class disciplines — Chinese medicine, integrated Chinese and Western medicine, and Chinese materia…

UNIVERSITIES

Beijing Forestry University: A Century of Chinese Forestry

In 1902, when the Imperial University of Peking added a forestry program to its agricultural department, the idea that forestry could one day launch satellites would have seemed absurd. But from that seedling of an idea, Beijing Forestry University grew into the institution that, in 2022, put China’s first ecological civilization Earth observation satellite into orbit — a device built to monitor the very forests its founders began studying more than a century earlier. The university’s modern form was shaped…

UNIVERSITIES

China Agricultural University: The Science Behind Every Harvest

When you eat a meal in China — whether it is rice from the northeast, wheat from the plains, or vegetables from a greenhouse in Shandong — a researcher at China Agricultural University has probably played a role in growing it. CAU traces its roots to 1905, when the Agricultural College of the Imperial University of Peking was established as the origin of modern agricultural higher education in China. Today, formed by the 1995 merger of Beijing Agricultural University and…

UNIVERSITIES

Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications: Wiring China Since 1955

In 1955, as China began building its national telecommunications infrastructure from scratch, the government created a specialized institute in Beijing to train the engineers who would wire the country. That institute — Beijing Institute of Posts and Telecommunications — was the first higher education institution in China dedicated to postal and telecommunications engineering. Renamed Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications in 1993, BUPT has evolved into a Double First-Class university with an A-plus ranking in Information and Communication Engineering, 3…

UNIVERSITIES

Beijing University of Chemical Technology: Engineering the Molecules That Move China

Founded as Beijing Institute of Chemical Technology, the university began in 1958 as the new China’s answer to a pressing question: who would develop the advanced chemical engineering talent needed for a modernizing nation? Today, Beijing University of Chemical Technology operates across three campuses in Chaoyang, Haidian, and Changping, covering 2,492 mu with approximately 1,046,400 square meters of built space. Now a national Double First-Class university with “Chemical Engineering and Technology” as its first-class discipline, BUCT enrolls more than 16,000…

UNIVERSITIES

Shanghai University of Finance and Economics: From a 1917 Commerce Seed

China’s first business university began as a single department. In 1917, the Nanjing Higher Normal School established a commerce program under the direction of Yang Xingfo, a social activist and patriot. Four years later, that program moved to Shanghai and became the National Southeast University’s Shanghai College of Commerce — the earliest business higher education institution in Chinese history. Now known as Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, it stands as the country’s oldest finance-economics university and a Double First-Class…

UNIVERSITIES

Shanghai International Studies University: Speaking to 54 Nations From Shanghai

The first foreign language university established after the founding of the People’s Republic began as a single-language school in December 1949, when the Shanghai Russian School enrolled its first students under the leadership of Jiang Chunfang, the renowned translator and founder of the Chinese Encyclopedia. From that origin, Shanghai International Studies University has grown into a 54-language institution with an A-plus discipline in foreign language and literature and a network of 440-plus global partners in 68 countries. As of 2024,…