Tsinghua University (THU) is a public university in Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education of China. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Construction. It is also a member of the C9 League.

Tsinghua University's campus is in northwest Beijing, on the site of the former imperial gardens of the Qing dynasty. The university has 21 schools and 59 departments, with faculties in science, engineering, humanities, law, medicine, history, philosophy, economics, management, education, and art.

Since the university was established in 1911, it has produced notable leaders in science, engineering, politics, business, and academia.

Tsinghua University was established in Beijing during a tumultuous period of national upheaval and conflicts with foreign powers which culminated in the Boxer Rebellion, an uprising against foreign influence in China. After the suppression of the revolt by a foreign alliance including the United States, the ruling Qing dynasty was required to pay indemnities to alliance members. United States Secretary of State John Hay suggested that the US$30 million Boxer indemnity allotted to the United States was excessive. After much negotiation with Qing ambassador Liang Cheng, president of the United States Theodore Roosevelt obtained approval from the United States Congress in 1909 to reduce the indemnity payment by US$10.8 million, on the condition that the funds would be used as scholarships for Chinese students to study in the United States.

Using this fund, the Tsinghua College (清華學堂; Qīnghuá Xuétáng) was established in Beijing, on 29 April 1911 on the site of a former royal garden to serve as a preparatory school for students the government planned to send to the United States. Faculty members for sciences were recruited by the YMCA from the United States, and its graduates transferred directly to American schools as juniors upon graduation.^{[citation needed]} The motto of Tsinghua, "Self-Discipline and Social Commitment", was derived from a 1914 speech by prominent scholar and faculty member Liang Qichao, in which he quoted the I Ching to describe a notion of the ideal gentleman.

In 1925, the school established its own four-year undergraduate program and started a research institute on Chinese studies. In 1928, the school changed its name to National Tsinghua University.

During the Second Sino-Japanese War, many Chinese universities were forced to evacuate their campuses to avoid the Japanese invasion. In 1937, Tsinghua University, Peking University and Nankai University merged to form the National Changsha Temporary University, located in Changsha, Hunan. The merged university later became the National Southwestern Associated University, located in Kunming, Yunnan. The Tsinghua University section of the merged university returned to Beijing at the end of World War II.

After the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, China experienced a communist revolution leading to the creation of the People's Republic of China. Tsinghua University's then president Mei Yiqi, along with many professors, fled to Taiwan with the retreating Nationalist government. They established the National Tsing Hua Institute of Nuclear Technology in 1955, which later became the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, an institution independent and distinct from Tsinghua University.