Chinese Government Scholarship Country Program (Type A)

About the university

Hainan University, located in Haikou City, Hainan Province, is a co-constructed university by the Hainan Provincial People's Government, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Finance. It is a key university under the national "211 Project" and a world-class discipline construction university. It has been selected for the Discipline Innovation and Talent Introduction Plan for Higher Education Institutions and serves as a Chinese Language Education Base of the State Council. It is a member of the "One Province, One University" National Key Construction University (Z14) Alliance for Central and Western China and the CDIO Engineering Education Alliance. The university's predecessors were the South China Tropical Agricultural University, founded in 1958, and the original Hainan University, established in 1983 with the approval of the State Council and the Ministry of Education, based on the former Hainan Normal College, Hainan Medical College, and Hainan Agricultural College (Hainan Agricultural College). In August 2007, the two institutions merged to form the new Hainan University. The university is a national "Double First-Class" construction university and a co-constructed university by the Ministry of Education and Hainan Province. As of September 2025, it has campuses in Haidian, Danzhou, Mission Hills (including Chengxi teaching point), and Yazhou, covering an area of 6,011 mu (about 990 acres) with a building area of 1.73 million square meters. It has 31 secondary colleges, 16 residential colleges, and 83 undergraduate programs. It also has 10 postdoctoral research stations, 16 first-level doctoral programs, 2 professional doctoral programs, 37 first-level master's programs, and 28 professional master's programs. The university has 3,809 faculty and staff, including 3,053 full-time teachers, and 46,685 full-time students, comprising 34,243 undergraduates, 9,888 master's students, and 2,554 doctoral students. In May 1958, the Hainan Branch of South China Agricultural College was established, with 70 teachers transferred from South China Agricultural College, offering two agricultural classes and enrolling 100 junior college students. The school was founded under the personal care of Premier Zhou Enlai, with central approval, to break the imperialist blockade of natural rubber in the early days of the People's Republic of China. It was a specialized institution focusing on tropical crops such as rubber, operating under the same leadership as the South China Tropical Crops Research Institute. On September 18 of the same year, the school officially opened. On July 8, 1959, the Hainan Branch of South China Agricultural College was officially renamed South China Tropical Crops College. At that time, it was directly under the leadership of the Ministry of Agriculture and Reclamation, with six departments: Rubber, Tropical Crop Cultivation, Plant Protection, Tropical Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, Tropical Product Processing, and Mechanization and Electrification. The campus was located in Baodao Yucun Village, Dan County. In the early days, the "Two Institutes" (the college and the research institute) broke through the internationally recognized "rubber planting exclusion zone" north of 15°N, creating a miracle of large-scale rubber planting in the 18-24°N region, making China the only country in the world to successfully plant rubber on a large scale at the northernmost latitudes. On February 9, 1960, Premier Zhou Enlai inspected the "Two Institutes," encouraging teachers and students to work hard and serve the country, and inscribed the words "Establishing a career in Danzhou, taking root in Baodao." In April 1969, the school was taken over by the Production and Construction Corps of the Guangzhou Military Region, renamed the "Tropical Crops School of the Production and Construction Corps of the Guangzhou Military Region," and held short-term training courses, with scientific and educational personnel sent to state farms for labor. On October 10, 1996, the State Education Commission approved the renaming of South China Tropical Crops College to South China Tropical Agricultural University; on October 18 of the same year, the university held a renaming and plaque-unveiling ceremony. Key historical visits include: on February 3, 1983, then-General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee Hu Yaobang visited the botanical garden; on April 2, 1996, then-Politburo Standing Committee member Hu Jintao visited the university history museum; and in the early days, teachers and students built school buildings with local materials, including thatched classrooms completed in 1958.