Tsinghua University (Chinese: 清华大学; pinyin: Qīnghuá Dàxué; THU) is a public research university in Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education of China. The university is part of the Double First-Class Construction, and was a part of its predecessor initiatives: Project 211 and Project 985. It is also a member of the C9 League.
Tsinghua University's campus is in northwestern Beijing, on the site of the former imperial gardens of the Qing dynasty. The university has 21 schools and 59 departments, with faculties in science, engineering, humanities, law, medicine, history, philosophy, economics, management, education, and art.
Since the university was established in 1911, it has produced notable alumni in science, engineering, politics, business, and academia. These include leaders Xi Jinping, Hu Jintao, and Zhu Rongji, and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate Yang Chen-Ning.
Early 20th century (1911–1949)
Tsinghua University was established in Beijing during a tumultuous period of national upheaval and conflicts with foreign powers which culminated in the Boxer Rebellion, an uprising against foreign influence in China. After the suppression of the revolt by a foreign alliance including the United States, the ruling Qing dynasty was required to pay indemnities to alliance members. United States Secretary of State John Hay suggested that the US$30 million Boxer indemnity allotted to the United States was excessive. After much negotiation with Qing ambassador Liang Cheng, president of the United States Theodore Roosevelt obtained approval from the United States Congress in 1909 to reduce the indemnity payment by US$10.8 million, on the condition that the funds would be used as scholarships for Chinese students to study in the United States.
Using this fund, the Tsinghua College (清華學堂; Qīnghuá Xuétáng) was established in Beijing, on 29 April 1911 on the site of a former royal garden to serve as a preparatory school for students the government planned to send to the United States. Faculty members for sciences were recruited by the YMCA from the United States, and its graduates transferred directly to American schools as juniors upon graduation. The motto of Tsinghua, "Self-Discipline and Social Commitment", was derived from a 1914 speech by prominent scholar and faculty member Liang Qichao, in which he quoted the I Ching to describe a notion of the ideal gentleman.
In 1925, the school established its own four-year undergraduate program and started a research institute on Chinese studies. In 1928, the school changed its name to National Tsinghua University.
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, many Chinese universities were forced to evacuate their campuses to avoid the Japanese invasion. In 1937, Tsinghua University, Peking University and Nankai University merged to form the National Changsha Temporary University, located in Changsha, Hunan. The merged university later became the National Southwestern Associated University, located in Kunming, Yunnan. The Tsinghua University section of the merged university returned to Beijing at the end of World War II.
Later 20th century (post-1949)
After the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, China experienced a communist revolution leading to the creation of the People's Republic of China. Tsinghua University's then president Mei Yiqi, along with many professors, fled to Taiwan with the retreating Nationalist government. They established the National Tsing Hua Institute of Nuclear Technology in 1955, which later became the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, an institution independent and distinct from Tsinghua University.
In 1952, the Chinese Communist Party regrouped the country's higher education institutions in an attempt to build a Soviet style system where each institution specialized in a certain field of study, such as social sciences or natural sciences. Tsinghua University was streamlined into a polytechnic institute with a focus on engineering and the natural sciences.
In 1953, Tsinghua established a political counselor program, becoming the first university to do so following the Ministry of Education's 1952 directive to begin piloting such programs. As political counselors, new graduates who were also Communist Party members worked as political counselors in managing the student body and student organizations, often simultaneously serving as Communist Youth League secretaries. The program was later expanded to other universities following its endorsement by Deng Xiaoping and became further institutionalized across China in the 1990s and 2000s.
During the Third Front construction, Tsinghua established a branch in Mianyang, Sichuan province.
In 1966, the efforts of Tsinghua researchers were critical in China's transition from vacuum-tube computers to fully transistorized computers.
From 1966 to 1976, China experienced immense sociopolitical upheaval and instability during the Cultural Revolution. Many university students walked out of classrooms at Tsinghua and other institutions, and some went on to join the Red Guards, resulting in the complete shutdown of the university as faculty were persecuted or otherwise unable to teach. It was not until 1978, after the Cultural Revolution ended, that the university began to take in students and re-emerge as a force in Chinese politics and society.
During the Criticize Lin, Criticize Confucius campaign of 1973 to 1976, critique groups formed at Tsinghua and Peking University disseminated commentaries under the pseudonym of "Liang Xiao", a homophone for "two schools".
In the 1980s, Tsinghua evolved beyond the polytechnic model and incorporated a multidisciplinary system emphasizing collaboration between distinct schools within the broader university environment. Under this system, several schools have been re-incorporated, including Tsinghua Law School, the School of Economics and Management, the School of Sciences, the School of Life Sciences, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, the School of Public Policy and Management, and the Academy of Arts and Design.
In 1996, the School of Economics and Management established a partnership with the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One year later, Tsinghua and MIT began the MBA program known as the Tsinghua-MIT Global MBA.