Wuhan University

The University is one of the earliest universities founded in modern China. It dates back to the Ziqiang (self-reliance) Institute, which was founded in 1893 by Zhang Zhidong, governor of Hubei and Hunan Provinces. On the occasion of its centennial celebration in 1993, President Jiang Zemin and other Party and State leaders presented their inscriptions of congratulations. The new Wuhan University was founded in 2000 after an amalgamation of the original Wuhan University, Wuhan University of Hydraulic and Electrical Engineering, Wuhan Technical University of Surveying and Mapping, and Hubei Medical University.

The campus of Wuhan University has been called “the most beautiful university in China” with an exceptional and picturesque setting. The university covers an area of 2.52 million square meters. Its many majestic, palatial buildings, which combine both Chinese and western styles, are widely regarded as being classic and graceful in form.

Currently, WHU has around 52,000 students and 3,600 professorial academic staff. They are organised into eleven academic disciplines, namely, philosophy, science, economics, law, education, literature, history, engineering, agriculture, medicine, and management. Alongside this structure, the university has set up six faculties, which are humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, engineering, information sciences and medicine.

Exceptionally amongst Chinese national universities, Wuhan University has five first-level subject disciplines that have been judged by the Chinese Ministry of Education as having the rank of national key disciplines. Within these broad categories, the university also has 29 secondary disciplines. 17 of these have also been assessed as national key disciplines with 6 secondary disciplines being ranked by the State as national key disciplines. In addition, the university has 28 first-level disciplines and 208 secondary disciplines that have been awarded the right to grant PhD degrees. 296 secondary disciplines have been approved to award degrees at Masters level. The university also has 32 post-doctoral workstations. In addition, the university has 3 triple AAA national standard affiliated hospitals in the Wuhan area.

Economics and Management School

Honoured as “the forefather of Chinese business education”, the Economics and Management School of Wuhan University (EMS) has a long history. It dates back to 1893 in the Qing Dynasty, when Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Hubei and Hunan provinces, founded the “Ziqiang (Self-Reliance) Institute.” This included a division of commerce and business and was, in practice, the earliest business education institution in China confirmed by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. In January, 2001, the Wuhan University established its first Business School through the merger of 5 different schools from 3 universities. In August 2005, the Business School was renamed as the Economics and Management School (EMS) and was relocated into a purpose-built office building. It offers 30,000m² of offices and teaching facilities which have been fully equipped with state-of-art teaching and research facilities together with an extensive library dedicated to economics and management and a nation-wide show-case research lab centre. Within its two broad subject disciplines of Economics and Management, the School has 4 first-level disciplines, all with the right to award Masters, PhD and post-doctoral qualifications. It has one national key first-level discipline and 7 national key secondary disciplines, all of which are distinguished qualifications within either the national higher education system or Hubei province itself. In September 2010, the School was offering 20 doctoral programmes, 25 master programmes, 10 professional master degree programmes (such as MBA, EMBA, etc), 19 undergraduate programmes and 7 experimental-teaching undergraduate classes.