CENTRAL UNIVERSITY FOR NATIONALITIES

(Zhongyang minzu daxue)

Central University for Nationalities (CUN), renamed on 30 November 1993, was established as the Central College for Nationalities (Zhongyang minzu xueyuan) on 2 May 1950 in Beijing. Characterized by programmes that focus on China’s minority nationalities, CUN is a comprehensive university emphasizing the humanities and social sciences. Other subjects include engineering, education, medicine, finance, management and fine arts. CUN is recognized as the nation’s best among comparable institutions, offering more programmes and graduating the best students

CUN has ten colleges with twenty-nine departments providing forty-one undergraduate, twenty-four master’s and nine doctoral programmes.There are also three post-doctoral centres. Of the 6,000 full-time students, over 350 are pursuing graduate degrees. With 85 per cent of the students from minority nationality backgrounds, CUN is the only campus in China embracing all fifty-six nationalities recognized by the government. Many of the 1,454 faculty and staff are well versed in their languages, histories and cultures. The university has graduated over 60,000 students. Many have become leading members of their communities.

CUN attaches great importance to research, having established forty-two research centres and institutes studying Anthropology, Economy of Minority Nationalities, and Diversity and Foreign Language Teaching. Research on ethnicity, language, religion, history and the fine arts of minority nationalities remains at the forefront of such research in China.

CUN’s library holds 110,000 books in over twenty languages, including Mandarin, Mongolian, Tibetan, Kazak and Korean. CUN’s Ethnic Museum houses 20,000 items. CUN has exchange programmes with over fifty universities throughout the world and enrols over 550 foreign students annually.

See also: autonomous regions; ethnic groups, history of