Guangxu Emperor
In 1896, the Nanyang Public School () was founded in Shanghai by the imperial edict of the Guangxu Emperor, under the Business and Telegraphs Office of the Qing imperial government. Four schools were established: a normal school, a school of foreign studies, a middle school, and a high school. Sheng Xuanhuai, the mandarin who proposed the idea to the Guangxu Emperor, became the first president and is, along with missionary educator John Calvin Ferguson, regarded as the university's founder.