Jinan University — guide for international students

Jinan University (暨南大学) was founded in 1906 in Nanjing as Jinan Academy (暨南学堂), the first school the Chinese state created for the children of Chinese families abroad. It moved to Shanghai in 1923, became National Jinan University in 1927, spent 1941–1946 in Fujian and was suspended in 1949; it reopened in Guangzhou in 1958, closed for ten years during the Cultural Revolution and was restored after 1978. It became a Project 211 university in 1996, and pharmacy has been selected in both rounds of the Double First-Class initiative.

Five campuses sit in three cities of the Greater Bay Area — Shipai, Panyu and Guangyuan East in Guangzhou, plus Zhuhai and Shenzhen — and which one you live on is set by your major. The profile updated in June 2026 records over 50,000 full-time students, more than 17,000 of them from Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, overseas Chinese communities and other countries; 2,777 full-time teachers, five of them academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences or Engineering; 111 undergraduate majors in 12 disciplinary categories; and 34 doctoral and 77 master’s first-level disciplines.

One structural fact shapes everything below: JNU runs two admission systems for students from outside mainland China. Chinese citizens with long-term residence abroad (华侨) and students from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan apply under their own brochure at RMB 6,060–18,000 a year; foreign nationals, including people of Chinese descent who have taken another nationality (华人), apply under the 来华留学生 brochure at RMB 19,000–40,000. This guide describes the second. Student counts differ by definition: the June 2026 profile gives 17,000+ for the combined overseas cohort, the English Facts and Figures page (November 2023 data) gives 2,477 international students, and QS reports 2,250 from 95 countries as of 2025.

Foreign nationals apply under JNU’s 2026 Admission Brochure for Overseas Chinese and Other Foreign Students, published 5 December 2025, which covers bachelor’s degrees and the preparatory year; master’s and doctoral applicants go through the Graduate School’s 2026 international guide instead. Undergraduate entry has two routes and, the point applicants most often miss, both require the China Scholastic Competency Assessment (CSCA), registered at csca.cn: admission through application review, with windows 15 January – 28 February and 1 April – 31 May 2026, or the joint entrance examination run with Huaqiao University, registered 1–15 March and sat 30–31 May 2026. Applicants must be 18 to 25 with a senior high-school diploma, and anyone who took foreign nationality having been from mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao or Taiwan must have held that passport four years and resided abroad two years within 1 May 2022 – 30 April 2026. The RMB 500 application fee is explicitly non-refundable. Postgraduate admission has its own calendar: the September 2026 window ran 22 January – 22 April, the HSK bar is Level 5 with 180 for humanities but Level 4 with 195 for the sciences, and English-taught programs ask TOEFL 90 or IELTS 6.5. The graduate guide sets no age limit and prints no tuition figures.

Degree programs

Select a degree level to see tuition, duration and entry requirements.

Non-degree programs

Documents to prepare

Application timeline

These are the dates Jinan University published for the 2026 intake. That cycle has closed. Use them as a guide to when each step falls in the year, and check the official pages for the 2027 dates before you plan around them.

JNU channels government scholarships rather than running its own stack of awards. Undergraduates are pointed at the Chinese Government Scholarship bilateral programme through the Chinese embassy in their country, at the “Silk Road” Chinese Government Scholarship the College of Chinese Language and Culture runs for three Chinese-taught majors, and at the International Chinese Language Teachers Scholarship. Postgraduates apply through the High-Level Postgraduate programme: win a pre-admission letter from JNU, then upload it to campuschina.org under agency number 10559, or the application is not accepted. The Guangdong provincial scholarship rewards students already enrolled; the International School’s Excellence Scholarship publishes no coverage figures.

JNU’s research has two centres of gravity that are unusual in combination: drug discovery and biomedicine on one side, study of the Chinese diaspora on the other. Pharmacy is the discipline carried through both rounds of the Double First-Class initiative, and the State Key Laboratory of Bioactive Molecules and Druggability Optimization is JNU’s first national key laboratory, joined by the National Engineering Research Center of Genetic Medicine, national-local joint centres for metal wear-resistant materials and network security, and a Ministry of Education key laboratory for regenerative medicine. The Academy of Overseas Chinese Studies is a Ministry of Education key research base.

Internationalisation at JNU is not a bolt-on: the university was created to teach Chinese families living abroad, and more than 600,000 graduates now live in over 170 countries and regions. The June 2026 profile counts cooperation with more than 300 universities and research institutions in 54 countries and regions. The largest joint venture is the Jinan University–University of Birmingham Joint Institute on the Panyu campus, teaching mathematics, statistics and economics in English; the International School, founded in 2001, runs the English-medium degrees and its own exchange network.

Jinan University does not publish employment or salary statistics for its international graduates, so treat any placement figure on an agency site as unsourced. What it does publish is scale: more than 600,000 graduates in over 170 countries and regions since 1906 — the practical value of a JNU degree for students who plan to work in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Macao or the wider Chinese diaspora. Careers support runs through the Student Career Guidance Center, which organises recruitment events, courses and counselling and handles the paperwork; most of it operates in Chinese.

Where you live at JNU follows your major, because each faculty sits on a fixed campus. On the main campus the university houses all undergraduate and graduate students across 22 dormitory buildings in four zones — Jianyang, Zhenru, Jingling and Zhouzhuan — managed from Jianyang 16 (+86-20-8522-6399). Dorm access runs 06:30–23:30 Sunday to Thursday and 06:30–24:00 on Friday, Saturday and holidays; buildings have WiFi, free boiled drinking water, scheduled hot water and microwaves, and high-power appliances are banned. Registration for the September 2026 intake is a single day, 8 September, 08:00–22:00, and students who miss it lose their place.

Accommodation

Dining

The main campus dining hall houses four canteens serving different regional cuisines, including a dedicated halal canteen, open 07:00–10:00, 10:00–13:30 and 16:30–18:30, with the Minghu Restaurant for Cantonese food, the Kingmark Bakery and JNU 1906 Coffee alongside. JNU does not publish meal costs for international students.

Facilities

Reach the Admissions Office, Jinan University (undergraduate and preparatory admission for foreign nationals) and the Graduate Admissions Office (master’s and doctoral admission) for questions about applications, documents, scholarships and arrival. Type university programs and offices are based on campus in Guangzhou.