Shanghai University

Shanghai University was established in 1922 and, despite its relative youth, was chosen as one of the Project 211 universities – a government initiative to fund 100 higher education institutions to become world-class universities in the 21st century. It is a comprehensive research-intensive university with a particular emphasis on international cooperation and exchange. Of its 37,000 plus students, 3,000 are from overseas, and hail from 119 different countries. Spread over three campuses in Baoshan, Yanchang and Jiading, the university has nearly 3,000 faculty to oversee its student body. One of the university’s key features is its library which has over four million volumes. The overall library is composed of three separate libraries with the main one located on the Baoshan campus. This eight-storey building has 38,000 square metres of floor space providing over 1,800 reading seats. Shanghai is one of China’s leading research institutions and routinely ranks highly in lists of overall research funding. Its research output from its 73 institutes is such that Shanghai has become an internationally recognised research university. Its faculty is also a mark of its research excellence, with numerous current and former staff members recognised as academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chinese Academy of Engineering. Elsewhere, the Chinese film director Xie Jin, most recently known for his film The Opium War, and the only Chinese director to be made a member of both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Directors’ Guild of America, was dean of Shanghai’s School of Film and Television Technology.