Institutions
Peking University is the first formally established modern national university of China. It was founded as Imperial Capital University (Chinese: 京師大學堂) in 1898 in Beijing as a replacement of the ancient Guozijian (Chinese: 國子監), the national central institute of learning in China's traditional educational system in the past thousands of years. Three years earlier, Sheng Xuanhuai (Chinese: 盛宣懷) submitted a memorial to Guangxu Emperor to request for approval to set up a modern higher education institution in Tianjin. After approval on October 2, 1895, Peiyang Western Study School (Chinese: 天津北洋西學學堂) was founded by him and American educator Charles Daniel Tenney (Chinese: 丁家立) and later developed to Peiyang University (Chinese: 北洋大學堂). In 1896, Sheng Xuanhuai (Chinese: 盛宣懷) delivered his new memorials to Guangxu Emperor to make suggestion that two official modern higher education institutions should be established in Beijing and Shanghai. In the same year, he founded Nanyang Public School (Chinese: 南洋公學) in Shanghai by an imperial edict issued by Guangxu Emperor. The institution initially included elementary school, secondary school, college, and a normal school. Later the institution changed its name to Jiao Tong University (also known as Chiao Tung University, Chinese: 交通大學). In the 1930s, the university was well known in the world as the "Eastern MIT" due to its reputation of nurturing top engineers and scientists. In the 1950s, part of this university was moved to Xi'an, an ancient capital city in northwest China, and was established as Xi'an Jiaotong University; the part of the university remaining in Shanghai was renamed Shanghai Jiao Tong University. These two universities have developed independently since then.
Controversially, Wuhan University also claimed that its predecessor as Ziqiang School (Chinese: 自強學堂) was the first modern higher education institution in China. On November 29, 1893, Zhang Zhidong (Chinese: 張之洞) submitted his memorial to Guangxu Emperor to request for approval to set up an institution designed for training students specializing in foreign languages, mathematics, science and business. However, after Ziqiang School (Chinese: 自強學堂)) was founded in Wuchang, no courses in science and business were developed and the school only focused on foreign languages teaching. Later, the school officially changed its name to Foreign Languages School (Chinese: 方言學堂). In China, there had been some earlier schools specializing in foreign languages learning, such as Schools of Combined Learning in Beijing (Chinese: 京師同文館, founded in 1862), in Shanghai (Chinese: 上海同文館/上海廣方言館, founded in 1863), and in Guangzhou (Chinese: 廣州同文館, founded in 1864). The students in these schools were also taught mathematics and other subjects, but mainly studied foreign languages. These schools are generally not considered as colleges/universities. It is widely accepted that Wuhan University was established as a college/university in 1913 as the National Wuchang Higher Normal College (Chinese: 國立武昌高等師範學校), but Wuhan University officially celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1993.
Tianjin University celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1995, followed by Jiao Tong University (both in Shanghai and Xi'an) in 1996. Other leading universities, such as Zhejiang University (1897), Peking University (1898), Nanjing University (1902), Fudan University (1905)，Tongji University (1907) and Tsinghua University (1911) also recently celebrated their hundredth anniversaries, one after another.
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“I envy neither the heart nor the head of any legislator who has been born to an inheritance of privileges, who has behind him ages of education, dominion, civilization, and Christianity, if he stands opposed to the passage of a national education bill, whose purpose is to secure education to the children of those who were born under the shadow of institutions which made it a crime to read.”
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