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The keju (科举), or imperial examination system, was established during the Sui Dynasty (隋朝) in the 6^th century to select civil servants. By the Ming and Qing dynasties (明清), from the 14^th to the 19^th centuries, the entire intellectual class had become deeply engrossed in these examinations. Every two to three years, millions of men—mostly young—sat for the exams, yet fewer than one percent were selected to fill official positions. China’s fragmented education system existed primarily to prepare young men for this purpose.

By the late Qing period, partly due to widening gaps in science and technology with the West and Japan, China suffered a series of humiliating defeats: the two Opium Wars (1842 and 1860), the Sino-French War (1885), the Sino-Japanese War (1895), and the invasion by the Eight-Nation Alliance (1901). The examination system, with its heavy emphasis on Confucian classics and rigid literary forms, came to be seen by many intellectuals as a root cause of China’s backwardness in science, technology, and political and social institutions. In 1905, the imperial examination system was officially abolished.

Soon after the Second Opium War, the Qing government embarked on efforts to reform higher education. In 1862, it established the Beijing Foreign Language Institute (京师同文馆), the first Western-style higher education institution in China, to train diplomats and translators. This marked the beginning of a century-long quest to modernize China’s higher education system.

In 1866, the Qing government founded the Fujian Maritime Academy (福建船政学堂) to provide training in seamanship, shipbuilding, and engineering. It was China’s first modern military and engineering school. Modeled on the Fujian academy, the Qing government later established the Tianjin Naval Academy (天津水师学堂) in 1880, the Huangpu Naval Academy (黄埔水师学堂) in 1887, and the Baoding Military Academy (保定陆军军官学堂) in 1906. These institutions produced many military leaders of the late Qing and early Republican periods.

Driven by new policies on higher education, a number of colleges and universities were founded around the turn of the 20^th century. Beiyang University (北洋大学堂) was established in 1895, followed by the Imperial University of Peking (京师大学堂, opening image) in 1898. These institutions were later renamed Tianjin University (天津大学) in 1951 and Peking University (北京大学) in 1912, respectively. In 1911, the United States Boxer Indemnity Fund sponsored the founding of the Tsinghua School (清华学堂) in Beijing to prepare students for study in the United States. Although the Qing dynasty fell just months after the school opened, Tsinghua endured and became Tsinghua University in 1925.

By the early 20^th century, China had roughly a dozen colleges and universities funded by national and provincial governments. Christian universities also played a significant role in higher education during the late Qing period. Protestant denominations—including Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Anglican, and Episcopal—established more than a dozen colleges and universities across China. The earliest and most prominent was St. John’s University (圣约翰大学), founded in Shanghai in 1879. Its distinguished alumni include Wellington Koo (顾维钧), diplomat and interim president of the Republic of China; I. M. Pei (贝聿铭), the world-renowned architect; and Lin Yutang (林语堂), celebrated linguist and writer.

On the eve of the 1911 Revolution, China had about two dozen Western-style higher education institutions, including military academies and Christian colleges, as well as thousands of foreign-educated returnees, most of them trained in Japan. These reforms, however, proved too limited and too late to save the Qing government. Dynastic rule ended in 1911 with the establishment of a republic. Chinese students in Japan emerged as the vanguard of the revolutionary movement. Ironically, although the Qing government had sent students abroad to strengthen the regime, it was ultimately overthrown by revolutionary forces that drew strong support from these very students.

Between the founding of the Republic of China in 1912 and Japan’s full-scale invasion in 1937, China experienced a period of relative stability that allowed higher education to expand, despite warlord conflicts, the Northern Expedition (北伐), and sporadic fighting between the Nationalist government and Communist forces. According to 1925 statistics, China had 50 public and private universities, employing 4,700 faculty members and enrolling more than 20,000 students. In addition, there were 58 public and private vocational junior colleges with nearly 2,000 faculty members and over 10,000 students. By 1947, shortly after the end of the Japanese occupation, the number of higher education institutions nationwide had grown to 130, including 55 universities serving some 93,000 students.

During this prewar period, Christian universities continued to grow and flourish. Institutions such as Ginling Women’s College (金陵女子大学), founded in Nanjing in 1913, and Hwanan College (华南女子文理学院), established in Fuzhou in 1921, exemplified this trend. Funded largely by American churches, most of these institutions adopted the model of the American liberal arts college.

By the early 20^th century, thousands of Chinese students sought higher education in the United States, a trend that continued throughout the Republican era. As East met West, a generation of pioneering education reformers emerged. Many—including Cai Yuanpei (蔡元培), Tao Xingzhi (陶行知), Zhang Boling (张伯苓), and Mei Yiqi (梅贻琦)—were Western-educated. Several earned doctoral degrees from Columbia University’s Teachers College under John Dewey, the American philosopher and educational reformer. Through his many students who returned to China, Dewey’s pragmatic educational philosophy exerted enormous influence. Nearly all of his educational works were translated into Chinese, and his ideas permeated major educational publications and reforms nationwide.

The expansion of China’s higher education came to a halt during the Japanese invasion from 1937 to 1945. Japanese air raids deliberately targeted universities and colleges. In the summer of 1937, after Nankai University was bombed and Peking University and Tsinghua University were occupied, several hundred professors and students retreated south to Changsha (长沙), nearly 1,500 kilometers from Beijing, to form the National Changsha Temporary University (国立长沙临时大学). In 1938, continued bombing forced approximately 800 faculty and students to retreat further west to Kunming (昆明), where they established the legendary National Southwest Associated University (国立西南联合大学). For eight years, professors and students taught and studied in makeshift facilities under extreme hardship. The university produced many of China’s most distinguished intellectuals, including physicist Yang Zhenning (杨振宁), a Nobel laureate, and writer Wang Zengqi (汪曾祺). Several other universities in Japanese-occupied areas—such as National Central University, National Wuhan University, National Zhejiang University, and Sun Yat-sen University—also relocated to the southwest.

For much of China’s educational history—from preparing candidates for the imperial examinations to the operation of modern universities—higher education has been deeply oriented toward serving the state and prevailing ideologies rather than fostering individual development. Nevertheless, during the century spanning the late Qing dynasty and the early Republic, China’s higher education system underwent profound modernization and increasing alignment with Western models. These reforms laid the foundation for subsequent developments, culminating in a higher education system that, over the past quarter century, has once again opened itself fully to the world.

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