page_title: Peking University
section_title: People's Republic of China (1949–present)
hierarchical_section_title: Peking University / History / People's Republic of China (1949–present)
caption_attribution_description: English: An entrance to the Peking University
context_page_description: Peking University, is a major research university in Beijing, China, and a member of the elite C9 League of Chinese universities. It is perennially ranked as one of the top academic institutions in China, Asia, and worldwide.
  The first modern national university established in China, it was founded during the late Qing Dynasty in 1898 as the Imperial University of Peking and was the successor of the Guozijian, or Imperial College. The university's romanized name, Peking, retains the older transliteration of "Beijing" that has been superseded in most other contexts.
  Throughout its history, Peking University has had an important role "at the center of major intellectual movements" in China. From the early 1920s, the university became a center for China's emerging progressive movements. Faculty and students held important roles in originating the New Culture Movement, the May Fourth Movement protests, and other significant cultural and sociopolitical events, to the extent that the university's history has been closely tied to that of modern China.
context_section_description: In 1949, after the People's Republic of China was established, Peking University lost its "national" appellation to reflect the fact that all universities under the new socialist state would be public. In 1952, Mao Zedong's government re-grouped the country's higher education institutions with individual institutions tending to specialize in a certain field of study after the Soviet model. As a result, some arts and science faculties of Tsinghua University and former Yenching University were merged into Peking University. At the same time, however, the university lost its Law, Medicine, Engineering and Agriculture schools. These schools and faculties were either merged into other universities or to found new colleges. During the re-grouping, Yenching University was closed up. Peking University moved from downtown Beijing to the former Yenching campus.
  The first disturbances of the Cultural Revolution began at Peking University in 1966; education there ceased between 1966 and 1970.
  On May 4, 1998, at the 100th anniversary of Peking University, Communist Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin announced that the government would initiate a national project to promote China's higher education by funding selected universities to achieve world-class level. The project was later named “985” based the date of its announcement.
  In 2000, Beijing Medical University was merged back into Peking University and became the Peking University Health Science Campus. Beijing Medical University used to be Medical School of Peking University and was separated from Peking University at 1952. Peking University now has eight affiliated hospitals and 12 teaching hospitals.
  In 2001, Peking University established the Yuanpei Program. It was formalized in 2007 as the Yuanpei College, named in honor of the highly respected former university president Cai Yuanpei. The college hosts an elite undergraduate liberal arts program that allows students to freely choose specialisations. In the same year, Peking University set up a satellite campus for graduate students in Shenzhen. The university's second business school, Peking University HSBC Business School was launched on the Shenzhen campus in 2004.
  In 2014, Peking University established the Yenching Academy, a fully funded global fellowship program designed "to cultivate leaders who will advocate for global progress and cultural understanding."
  In 2018, Peking University was subject to criticism over its handling of sexual assault allegations against a member of the faculty, Professor Shang Yang. The accuser, Gao Yan, a Chinese literature undergraduate, accused the teacher of rape; she committed suicide in 1998. On April 9, 2018, student activist Yue Xin filed a freedom of information request to the university for documents related to the accusations, specifically Professor Yang's official self-criticism documents. According to Yue, the university faculty attempted on numerous occasions to coerce her into rescinding the request. The incident has been referred to as being part of the international Me Too movement.
  Following The Jasic Incident of 2018, Peking University began exerting pressure on its student-led Marxist group, The Peking University Marxist Society. During the autumn semester of 2018, The Marxist Society was informed that it would not be able to re-register as an academic club. The group released a statement in September announcing that it would likely be shut down by the university in the near future.  Peking University undergraduate student and head of the Marxist Society Qiu Zhanxuan was arrested by Chinese police on December 28, while traveling off campus to a celebration of Mao Zedong's 125th birthday.
caption: Peking University's West Gate, one of the symbols of the university campus
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