A university that spent three decades known by a grander name, Xijiang University, now builds its reputation on a faster climb: master’s-granting status in 2021, doctoral cultivation approval in 2024. Zhaoqing University, born in 1970 as a local normal school, has moved through two identities and a merger in half a century, and its current ambition, to become a university in the full sense of the word, is written into its three flagship projects, better disciplines, a university name and doctoral programs.
The lineage began in 1970 with the Zhaoqing Regional Normal School, which passed through several incarnations before taking the name Xijiang University in the 1980s. In 2000 Xijiang University merged with the Zhaoqing Education Institute to form the undergraduate Zhaoqing University. The school sits in the city of Zhaoqing, west of Guangzhou on the Pearl River, with nearly 26,000 undergraduates and a main campus of about 1,280 hectares plus a new campus of about 750 hectares under phased construction.
The academic map spans eleven discipline fields through twenty-one colleges and fifty-eight undergraduate programs, with nine master’s degree programs including a first-level program in regional and country studies. Engineering sits in the ESI global top 1 percent, and twelve national or provincial first-class programs and five engineering-education-accredited majors mark the teaching side.
Innovation is a local strength. The university science park holds national science-park, incubator and maker-space status, an unusually complete triple credential for a provincial university, and its research platforms, more than sixty municipal-and-above, support the region’s advanced manufacturing and agriculture. In five years the university has won twenty-six national research projects and 194 invention patents, including 32 international ones.
The arts hold their own place. A student work took the bronze medal at a national fine arts exhibition, the only Guangdong entry to place, and the university has made teacher training and applied design its twin pillars. Partnerships span more than ninety institutions in twenty-plus countries.
The direction is written in its three flagship projects: better disciplines, a university name and doctoral programs. Half a century after it opened as a regional normal school, the university that once borrowed a river’s name now aims to earn one of its own.
Data Source: ZQU Official Website (as of 2026)
