Beijing Jiaotong University is a national key university under the direct administration of the Ministry of Education and now is jointly supported by the Ministry of Education, the China Railway Corporation and Beijing Municipal Government. BJTU is one of the first universities selected into the “National 211 Project” and the “985 Strength Discipline Innovation Platform” project, one of the first institutions authorized to confer master’s and doctoral degrees. BJTU, as the leading organization, has established the Collaborative Innovation Centre for Rail Transit Safety, which is one of the first 14 collaborative centers approved by the Chinese government to enter the “National 2011 Projects”. BJTU has been selected into the top 100 of the “QS BRIC five countries” for 3 consecutive years, 6 disciplines have entered the top 400 of the QS World University.

As one of the three origins of the Jiaotong University, the history of BJTU can be dated back to 1896. BJTU grew out of Beijing Railway Management Institute, China’s first higher educational institution which was committed to fostering railway management talents and initiated modern China’s education in railway management and telecommunication. In 1917, it was reorganized into Beijing Railway Management School and Beijing Post and Telecommunication School. In 1921, it merged with the Shanghai Industrial College, Tangshan Industrial College to form Jiaotong University. After the reorganization of Jiaotong University in 1923, the Beijing campus was renamed Beijing Jiaotong University. In 1950, the school was named Northern Jiaotong University, and the president was the famous bridge expert Mao Yisheng. In 1952, the Northern Jiaotong University was revoked, therefore, the Beijing and Tang campus became independent and the school was renamed Beijing Railway Institute. In 1970, the name Northern Jiaotong University was resumed. In 2000, it had merged with the Beijing Electric Power College and the administration was transferred from the Ministry of Railways to the Ministry of Education. In 2003, the name Beijing Jiaotong University was resumed. Some renowned people in Chinese history received education at the University, including Liu Han, founder of China’s first radio station, Ying Shangcai, inventor of China’s first high-power steam engine, Zheng Zhenduo, famous writer and literary critic and historian, Jin Shixuan, author of China’s first railway management monograph, Xu Jing, pioneer of railway transport economics in China, and Yang Rumei, one of the early four major accountants in China. Some famous scholars worked at the University, including Xiang Zhejun, Chief Prosecutor of the Tokyo Trial and Ma Yinchu, famous demographer and economist.

On September 10th , 2016, BJTU has held a simple and solemn celebration under the theme “Jiao Tong, Chinese Dream”. In the celebration meeting, the congratulatory letter of Liu Yandong was read out. Wang Anshunm, mayor of Beijing and Du Zhanyuan, deputy minister of Ministry of Education attended the meeting and delivered speeches. Moreover, ministers of Ministry of Transport of Russia and Mongolia also sent their congratulatory letters. And, five presidents of five Jiaotong Universities jointly issued the Beijing Declaration of Jiaotong University, which marked a new chapter for Jiaotong University in the new future. Representatives from China Railway Association, the Chinese Association for Science and Technology, the Chinese Society of Higher Education, the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the State Secrecy Bureau, the State Railway Bureau, the Beijing Municipal Committee and the relevant districts and counties, school directors and co-building units, more than 20 Chinese Academy of Sciences, 6 Chinese Embassy officials, 31 overseas universities, 6 Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan universities and 22 mainland universities, as well as alumni, teachers and students attended the celebration meeting. At the same time, BJTU also held more than 10 major activities, such as the 2016 Global University Presidents Summit, China Transportation Senior Forum and celebration party.

BJTU has held President Forum of China-Russia Jiaotong University in 2015, Premier Li Keqiang sent a congratulatory letter. So far, BJTU has established Sino Russia Jiaotong Institute in St Petersburg, Sino Russian high-speed railway research center, Sino Britain high-speed railway research center, international joint laboratory of high-speed railway security operation and service and international scientific research platform of global supply chain and logistics. BJTU actively carries out traffic management of foreign industry training and expands the international reputation and influence.

Disciplines BJTU’s ranked well in the third round of the national academic assessment. System science was the first, transportation engineering information ranked the third and communication engineering was the 8th. So far, System science ranked the first nationwide in three consecutive round of assessment.

BJTU is located in Beijing, the capital city of China with east and west campuses in Haidian District. It covers a total area of almost 1,000 mu (1 mu approximately equals 667 square meters), and its building area is 910 thousand square meters. The university has also established a new Weihai campus and put it into use in 2015. Each campus has sound teaching and research facilities as well as a beautiful environment.

BJTU has achieved distinction in offering a range of academic programs thanks to its development in over one hundred years. BJTU has fostered a strong sense of collaboration and innovation. The university has become an important base to turn out talents, especially outstanding talents in information technology and urban rail transit, for the economic and social development of China. The university has been closely connected with the nation’s industrialization, urbanization, informationization since its establishment. BJTU contributes to comprehensive transportation system, especially to speed up the development of rail transport as well as promotes integration of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, which contributes actively contribution to the national transportation, logistic, information engineering, new energy engineering and social economy in Beijing. BJTU has set up a development goal and the “three step” strategy to be the first class universities in the middle of this century.

After three centuries development, the school formed an advantage of information, management and other disciplines for the traffic characteristics of science and technology. The university has a complete curriculum system of industry, management, economy, literature, law and philosophy. BJTU has 14 schools, including the school of electronic and information engineering, school of computer and information technology, school of economics and management, school of civil engineering, school of mechanical, electronic and control engineering, school of electrical,  school of science, school of software engineering, school of marxism, school of architecture and design, law school, school of national security, graduate school and school of distance and continuing education. Beijing Jiaotong University Haibin campus was co-founded with enterprises in Huanghua, Hebei province. BJTU has two level-1 national key disciplines—— traffic and transportation engineering and information and communication engineering, two level-2 national disciplines—— industrial economics, bridge and tunnel engineering. So far, BJTU has 8 national key disciplines. There are 15 post-doc research stations, 20 level-1 disciplines offering doctoral degree programs, 34 level-1 disciplines offering master’s degree programs, 13 professional degree programs such as MBA, EMBA, M.Eng, M.Acc, M.Law and etc.

BJTU has regarded the improvement of teachers’ quality as the top priority of running a university and it has vigorously implemented the strategy of strengthening the school talents. Till now, BJTU has 2,907 faculty and staff members including 1,846 full-time teachers. (Among the full-time teaching staff, 1,199 are deputy senior professional and technical positions and 1733 are master's degree or above.) BJTU has 2 academicians of CAS, 2 academicians of Chinese Academy of Engineering , 5 national teachers, 6 members of academic evaluation group of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council, 4 “973” chief scientists, 9 selected person of “Thousand Talents program”, 6 selected person of “ Ten Thousand Talents program”, 8 distinguished professors and part-time professors of “Yangtze River scholar”, 11 National candidates of  Talents Project, 9 winners of national outstanding youth fund, 11 winners of outstanding youth fund, 69 person of the program for New Century Excellent Talents project, 158 experts who enjoy special government allowance.

BJTU has always been taking talents cultivating as a fundamental task of education and it had cultivated a large number of talents to the country for the past 100 years. BJTU achieves excellent grade in the national undergraduate teaching assessment in 1997 and 2006. Now the University has 14,253 undergraduate students, 7,966 graduate students, 2,891 doctoral students, 6,918 professional degree students and 7,810 adult students. There are 820 long-term international students in total.

BJTU has won 1 national award in grand prize, 3 national awards in third prize, 12 national wards in second prize, 1 Beijing municipal award in grand prize, 27 Beijing municipal awards in first prize, 29 Beijing municipal awards in second prize in recent three years’ teaching achievement award; approved 3 education pilot projects and 1 national education reform pilot school  by the state in recent 5 years; has 8 disciplines of national plan for educating and training outstanding engineers and 7 national professional pilot comprehensive disciplines reformation; awarded 2 “12th Five-Year” national experimental teaching demonstration centers, 2 national centers of virtual simulation experiment teaching, 3 national extracurricular practice bases, 7 national engineering practical education centers, 2 Beijing municipal demonstrative innovation practical bases; established national teaching demonstration center; approved 4 national quality video open classes, 22 excellent resource sharing course projects, 42 “12th Five-Year” general higher education undergraduate national planning teaching materials of 34 kinds. BJTU strengthens the cultivation of outstanding innovative talents through the establishment of an experimental class of Science (Si Yuan Class), the experimental class of top-notch talent discipline foundation (Zhi Xing Class), overseas project manager class, rail transport pilot class, the master (doctor) mode of talent training class, Zhan Tianyou Class, Mao Yisheng Class and international class. The quality and training level of BJTU has increased year by year, the employment rate is stable at a high level, undergraduate and graduate employment rate is above 98% and more than 50% undergraduate students choose further education. Student art troupe performed outstanding achievements in the national and the Beijing municipal competitions, won the first prize in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th university art performance instrumental group and gave performances in overseas regions, Hong Kong and Macao. The rehearsal version of “Long March suite” performed by BJTU students caused strong repercussions in the community, the original drama “Mao Yisheng” was selected as “the backbone of the Republic - the science and Engineering Master elite propaganda”. High level sports team has won 112 (times) first prizes in national level and above national level in all kinds of competitions, including 76 championship in the world university badminton competitions and other major events domestic and abroad.

BJTU takes strengthening scientific and technological innovation as a strategic focus of development, constantly improves social service capacity. BJTU has teaching, research instruments and equipment assets 1.07 trillion RMB yuan; 84.91 thousand library paper books, electronic books, network resources with a transport characteristics database. BJTU has 47 provincial and ministerial level research platforms, including 1 national key laboratory, 1 national engineering research center, 6 national engineering laboratories, 1 national energy research center, 4 national accredited laboratories, 1 national university science and technology park, 9 key laboratories of ministry of education / engineering research center, 1 Beijing laboratory, 10 key laboratories of Beijing engineering technology research center and other 13 provincial and ministerial level scientific research platforms. In recent 5 years, the university supervised nearly 11,000 research projects such as National 973 Plan, National 863 Plan, National Science Fund, National Social Science Fund and other projects established by Ministry of Education, Ministry of Railways and so on. The research fund reached 3.67 billion RMB. BTJU has published 3,097 papers in SCIE citations and 5,214 papers in EI citations. There were 2,107 patent applications and 1,360 approvals. BJTU has hosted 8 Chinese Senior Jiaotong forum and 42 BJTU lectures, hosted and undertaken 40 high level international conferences. BJTU has won 12 national awards, 136 provincial science and technology awards, 1 national natural science award in second prize, 1 national science and technology progress award in second prize and 1 national technology invention award in second prize as well as outstanding award in scientific research in the 8 undertaken projects (humanities and social sciences).

BJTU has established cooperative relations with over 205 universities and famous multi-national enterprises from more than 38 countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and France in order to cultivate first-class talents with global vision. The university has established Confucius Institutes with KU Leuven in Belgium, Texas Southern University in the United States and University of Campinas in Brazil. BJTU has hosted or undertaken international academic conferences of international wireless communications, signal processing, railway engineering, low carbon logistics and other fields. International Culture Festival is held every two years to promote the exchange of Chinese and foreign academic culture. The declaration of the "Chinese New Energy Institute" was selected into the “Internationalization of Demonstration Universities Promoting Plan”. and foreign funds has increased year by year. BJTU has 17 long-term foreign experts, including 3 national “thousand foreign experts plan”; 5 Sino foreign cooperative education projects in order to carry out the education of undergraduate and graduate degrees and to enhance internationalization of the school. To give full play of the Alumni Association, the foundation and the board of directors, BJTU has set up 37 local Alumni Associations, absorbed 78 boards of directors, and established strategic cooperative relationship with the enterprises of transportation, logistics, information, energy and other industries as well as local governments, which realized long-term and extensive cooperation in personnel training and scientific research.

“Think of the source while drinking the water, love the country and honor the alma mater.” Today, with 120 years of glorious history, Beijing Jiaotong University carries on her mission, following the motto of “Learn and Practice” and the spirit of modesty, caution and innovation, remembering the demand and expectations of the former national leaders, and striding towards the goal of building a world-renowned university with high-level distinction.