History
The Communist Party of China first established a Nationalities Institute in its Civil War stronghold of Yan'an, in central China, in October 1941. In 1950-1952, this was merged with other ethnolinguistic and sociological departments, including elements of Peking University and Tsinghua University. The result was the Central Institute for Nationalities, which officially opened on 11 June 1952. The Institute was assigned a large area of parkland on the outskirts of Beijing as its campus.
Both the Yan'an and Central institutes were intended to train cadres (officials) for ethnic minority areas, as well as providing a liberal arts education for promising students from the minorities. Their research was and is intended to support the policies of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission. In its early years, the Institute was caught up in the sensitive issue of classifying China's vast population into official ethnic groups, until the Cultural Revolution made conventional education almost impossible.
With the advent of Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening up policy (c.1978), the Institute went through considerable changes. On the downside, it lost most of its campus to a variety of development projects and it is now in a heavily built-up area. Financial pressures in the early 21st century led to a rapid rise in student numbers, particularly of Han students.
On the upside, the Institute expanded into science subjects during the 1980s and achieved university status on 30 November 1993. In 1999 it was granted "key university" status as part of "Project 211", which was supposed to identify one hundred Chinese universities which would play leading roles in the 21st century. Since 2004 the university has been a participant in Project 985, a major national programme to raise 39 universities to world-class status. The campus has been almost completely reconstructed as part of this programme.
Meanwhile, Haidian has continued to develop as Beijing's main university district. CUN is now adjacent to the National Library of China and Zhongguancun, which local media refer to as "China's silicon valley". In 2006 a large site was acquired in Beijing's Fengtai district, and it is likely that a second campus will be constructed there.
Read more about this topic: Minzu University Of China
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