Chinese Universities Resisting Mergers

Not too long ago, a reported attempt to merge the famous Peking (北京大学) and Tsinghua (清华大学) Universities met with vigorous protests, and was subsequently abandoned.

In 1999, students in Sichuan province (四川省) boycotted classes and tried to demonstrate against plans to merge the South-west University of Politics and Law (西南政法大学), where many senior legal officials were trained, with the far less prestigious Chongqing University (重庆大学) which is much easier to get into.

The opposition to merger is easy to understand, especially for Peking and Tsinghua. The move is as incredulous as trying to merge Harvard and Yale.

But other mergers did take place.

Shanghai's famous Fudan University (复旦大学, pictured) did merge with the Shanghai Medical University and the Shanghai Languages Foreign University to become a massive institution with 28,000 full-time and 8,000 part-time students.