The Zhejiang Provincial Department of Education recently published the "Zhejiang Province 15th Five-Year Plan for Education Development" on its official website, which proposes supporting Hangzhou in preparing to establish Qiantang University (provisional name).
Qiantang University will be a new type of research-oriented university. In June 2025, the Hangzhou municipal government signed a framework agreement on cooperative school-running with the Hangzhou Qiantang Education Foundation, which will uphold the philosophy of "high-starting-point planning, research-driven development, international expansion, and small-but-excellent excellence," focusing on science, engineering, and interdisciplinary disciplines to cultivate strategic scientists, leading talents, and outstanding engineers needed for technological self-reliance and self-strengthening.
The 2026 Hangzhou municipal government work report, when deploying key work for the 15th Five-Year Plan period, mentioned "supporting Qiantang University in building a new type of research-oriented university." The founder of the Hangzhou Qiantang Education Foundation is Zhong Shanshan, founder of Nongfu Spring (SEHK: 9633). In early 2025, during a speech at the annual meeting of Nongfu Spring's parent company Yangshengtang, he disclosed plans to establish a new type of university, stating, "Our commitment to this school is to rely on Yangshengtang's accumulated resources and the contributions of every employee, with plans to donate 40 billion yuan over the next decade." He expressed the goal of building a new type of university that China does not yet have.
Currently, the Qiantang University (provisional name) project has begun construction. According to the campus construction project design plan publicly announced by the Hangzhou Municipal Planning and Natural Resources Bureau in February 2026, the school is located in Zhuantang, Xihu District, and will be built in three phases, with a total land area of 346,592 square meters and a total building area of 399,492 square meters.
Zhejiang already has two new-type universities established by non-governmental forces, namely Westlake University and Ningbo Eastern Institute of Technology, which were approved for establishment in 2018 and 2025, respectively. The "Zhejiang Province 15th Five-Year Plan for Education Development" proposes improving the classified development system for universities, supporting Westlake University and Ningbo Eastern Institute of Technology in building world-class new-type research universities, and supporting new-type research universities in exploring multiple types of selection mechanisms and gradually expanding enrollment scales.
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