Old building of the Peking Union Medical College in Beijing
Peking Union Medical College, also known as Peking Union Medical College, Tsinghua University, located in Dongcheng District, Beijing, China, is administered by the State Council's health administration department. It operates under an integrated management system with the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, serving as China's highest-level medical research institution and highest-level medical education institution. The college is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Construction.
Peking Union Medical College was originally established in 1906 and is China's earliest medical institution to offer an 8-year medical education program and undergraduate nursing education. Due to cooperation with Tsinghua University for education, it was renamed Peking Union Medical College, Tsinghua University in 2006. Students and graduate students in both clinical and non-clinical medical programs will receive diplomas and degrees from both Tsinghua University and Peking Union Medical College upon graduation.[1][2][3][4]
History
The Peking Union Medical College was founded in 1906 by the American and British missionaries and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. It remains one of the finest medical schools in China today.
The Peking Union Medical College Hospital was founded in 1906. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., the London Missionary Society, and later, the Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the Medical Missionary Association of London, together with the then-Chinese government cooperated in the foundation and development of the Medical College and maintained it until 1915. The Rockefeller Foundation was established in 1913 and in 1913-1914 the newly formed Foundation created a Commission, including Dr. Franklin C. McLean, to examine medical education in China. Dr Wu Lien-teh strongly supported the establishment of a new medical college in Peking and made a number of recommendations, all of which were adopted.[5] One of its recommendations was that the Foundation - through a subsidiary organization - should assume financial responsibility for the college. On July 1, 1915, the recently established China Medical Board assumed full support of the Union Medical College, having previously acquired the property. The commission's members had included both William Welch, the first Dean of the Johns Hopkins Medical School, and Simon Flexner. The China Medical Board modeled the school after Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine following the recommendations of the Flexner Report, which set the foundation of modern Medical Education in the United States and Canada. The PUMC was reorganized in 1917 and celebrated its 90th anniversary with a ceremony attended by the president of Johns Hopkins University, the chair of the China Medical Board and representatives of the Rockefeller family and Rockefeller Brothers Fund. John Black Grant, M.D., M.P.H. was a founding faculty member of PUMC and served from 1921 to 1938 as professor and chair of its Department of Public Health. Dr. Grant is the father of James P. Grant, the third executive director of UNICEF.
In 1951, the government of the People's Republic of China nationalized Peking Union Medical College. In 1956, the school came under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Health.
Current status
Peking Union Medical College, Tsinghua University GateNorth campus
At present, Peking Union Medical College has developed into a national-level comprehensive medical research institution integrating medical education, teaching, scientific research and production, with 21 research institutes, 6 affiliated hospitals, 10 colleges and 105 off-campus research and development institutions.
Peking Union Medical College has provided generations of leaders for academic and clinical medicine and related areas all over the world.
As of 2025, Peking Union Medical College was listed as one of the top 200 universities in the World University Rankings.[6] It is consistently ranked among the top medical schools in China and has ranked in the top 1 or 2 best nationwide, together with Capital Medical University among Chinese Medical Universities in the recognized Best Chinese Universities Ranking.[7][8]
As of 2024, its "Biomedical Engineering" and "Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences" were ranked 34th and 2nd in the world respectively, while "Biological Sciences" and "Public Health" were placed in the top 100 in the world by the Academic Ranking of World Universities.[9] As of 2025, its "Pharmacology and Toxicology" also ranked 9th globally by the U.S. News & World Report.[10]
Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)
Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, is one of the annual publications of world university rankings. It's the first global university ranking with multifarious indicators.
n April 2025, Peking Union Medical College in China was exposed by the media to have launched a clinical medicine doctoral training program in 2018 known as the "4+4" model, which consists of 4 years of non-medical undergraduate education followed by 4 years of medical professional education. The program uses the theory of liberal education as a justification, arguing that doctors should possess a broader knowledge base beyond medicine. This has sparked a debate between liberal education and specialized education. The public has expressed disapproval, claiming that it not only wastes the first four years of undergraduate study but also results in doctors trained under the liberal education theory lacking adequate medical skills. Furthermore, the program has been criticized as a shortcut for children of powerful and wealthy families to quickly obtain a doctoral degree.[15]
Bullock, Mary Brown. An American Transplant: The Rockefeller Foundation and the Peking Union Medical College (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).
McLean, Franklin C, Ph.D., Guide to the Franklin C. McLean Papers 1881-1969 (Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library, 2006).
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