Fujian Normal University opened in 1907 as a training school for teachers, founded by Chen Baochen, tutor to the last Qing emperor. Over a century later it remains, at heart, a teachers university: it was the first in China to have all its accredited teacher-training programs pass national review.
It merged with several other institutions, including a women’s liberal arts college and a Christian university, to become Fujian Teachers College in 1953 and Fujian Normal University in 1972. In 2012 it came under joint construction by the provincial government and the Ministry of Education, and in 2022 it was named a Class A university in Fujian’s second “Double First-Class” round. Lecturers over the decades have included Ye Shengtao, a celebrated writer and educator, and Dong Zuobin, an early master of Chinese archaeology.
Two campuses in Fuzhou cover nearly 400 hectares and serve more than 26,000 undergraduates and 11,000 postgraduates. Its 86 undergraduate programs include 36 national first-class programs, and it grants doctorates in 19 first-level disciplines and master’s degrees in 32, with 20 postdoctoral stations. Ten disciplines rank in the ESI global top 1 percent, six of them in the top 0.5 percent.
Its 2,100-plus full-time teachers include three foreign academicians and a deep bench of national talent: nine distinguished scholars of the National Science Fund, thirteen outstanding young scholars, and four Cheung Kong scholars. Research rests on more than 130 provincial and ministerial platforms, including a national field observation station and a ministry key laboratory for philosophy and social sciences. Awards at provincial level or above total over 1,000, including 18 from the three national science and technology prizes. Its library, a national key protection unit for ancient books, holds nearly five million printed volumes and is known for rare editions, stele rubbings and local documents.
The university cooperates with nearly 200 institutions in countries including the United States, Britain, Italy and Australia, and runs the University of Huddersfield College plus six Sino-foreign programs, alongside close ties with universities in Taiwan. Its overseas Chinese education is especially active: volunteers have taught Chinese in 29 countries in 24 cohorts totaling 1,115 people, and two Confucius Institutes built with partner universities in the Philippines and Indonesia have both been named global advanced Confucius Institutes.
Its motto, “To Know and to Act, with Devotion and with Aspiration,” has guided the school since its founding. Since 1907 the university has sent nearly 600,000 graduates into society. After 119 years, the training ground for teachers that Chen Baochen founded still answers the province’s most basic question: who will teach the next generation.
Data Source: FNU Official Website (as of 2026)
