China Academy of Art, Zhejiang University of Technology, Zhejiang Normal University, Ningbo University and Hangzhou Dianzi University are the first batch of provincial key construction universities announced by the General Office of Zhejiang Provincial People's Government. Key universities in a broad sense refer to universities supported by the people of China and Chinese mainland, which have different meanings in different periods.

1959 the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China's decision to designate a number of key universities in colleges and universities identified 20 universities as national key universities; 1960 "central government's decision on increasing national key institutions of higher learning" added 44 universities as national key universities; 1978 "Notice of the State Council on Forwarding the Report of the Ministry of Education on Restoring and Running National Key Colleges and Universities" identified 88 colleges and universities as national key universities. By 198 1,1was added one after another, which was the concept of' key universities' in the planned economy era.

1995-2008, the central government successively designated 1 12 universities as "2 1 1 project" key construction universities; From 65438 to 0998, the central government designated 39 universities as the key construction universities of the "985 Project".

In 20 17, the central government issued the Notice on Publishing the List of World-class Universities and First-class Discipline Construction Universities and Discipline Construction, officially confirming the first batch of "Double-class" construction universities 137, including 42 world-class universities (36 in Class A and 6 in Class B) and 95 world-class discipline construction universities.

In addition, in order to support the development of universities in the central and western regions, there are several key universities in the central and western regions. In 20 12, the central government determined that 24 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) 100 universities in the central and western regions were selected for the basic capacity building project of universities in the central and western regions; It was established that 14 universities in central and western provinces without universities directly under the Ministry of Education were selected into the comprehensive strength improvement project of universities in central and western regions, and all of them were included in the cooperation between the Ministry of Education and the provinces to build universities.

In the modern sense, key universities include those selected for national projects such as "Double First-class", "20 1 1 Plan" and basic capacity building projects of universities in the central and western regions, as well as former national key universities, universities directly under the central government, universities established by provincial departments and provincial key universities determined by the governments of provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions.