Beijing University

Beijing University

or

Peking University,

at Beijing, China; founded as Metropolitan Univ. 1898, renamed Peking Univ. 1911, absorbed nontechnical departments of Tsinghua Univ. and merged with and moved to the campus of Yanjing (Yenching) Univ. 1952. Divided into six colleges, it is China's foremost liberal arts university and has a large mathematics and science faculty as well. Some 80 research institutes and centers are affiliated with the university. The university library, the largest such library in China, contains over 4 million volumes, including more than a million thread-bound Chinese books. During the Second Sino-Japanese WarSino-Japanese War, Second,
1937–45, conflict between Japanese and Chinese forces for control of the Chinese mainland. The war sapped the Nationalist government's strength while allowing the Communists to gain control over large areas through organization of guerrilla units.
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, the university relocated to Kunming, Yunnan, and with Tsinghua and Nankai universities formed the National Southwestern Associated Univ. From 1966 to 1970, during the height of the Cultural RevolutionCultural Revolution,
1966–76, mass mobilization of urban Chinese youth inaugurated by Mao Zedong in an attempt to prevent the development of a bureaucratized Soviet style of Communism.
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, Beijing Univ. was closed.