China's Ministry of Education (MOE) Degrees and Graduate Education Development Center recently released the disciplinary assessment results for China’s universities of 2012. The mechanics discipline of Peking University (PKU) tied for the first place with that of Tsinghua University and Harbin Institute of Technology.
  
The Mechanics discipline at PKU was founded in 1952 by the famous scientist Zhou Peiyuan (P. Y. Chou), one of the founders of the Chinese Theoretical Physics and Modern Mechanics. It was then the first Mechanics discipline of New China. A number of renowned scholars represented by Zhou laid a solid foundation for the creation and development of the discipline, such as Qian Min, Wu Lin-xiang, Ye Kaiyuan, Chen Yaosong, Dong Tiebao, Wang Ren, Zhou Guangjiong and Sun Tianfeng.

Developing upon the basis of the Mechanics discipline, today’s Department of Mechanics and Aerospace Engineering is home to over 40 outstanding scholars and experts who not only focus on teaching, but are also engaged in frontier disciplines research, and are undertaking research projects of major national needs. The department has obtained prominent results in terms of student cultivation, science and cutting-edge research and service for the national needs.

As a primary key discipline, the mechanics at PKU is the sole discipline in China that contains three secondary key disciplines: fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, general mechanics and foundation. Over the past 60 years, it has trained generations of outstanding talents. The disciplinary assessment results this time once again proved its achievements.

The MOE assessment of 2012 took more than 5,000 experts a year to complete. The assessment involved with all disciplines in China that have postgraduate training and degree-granting eligibility, mainly in the institutions of higher learning, as well as scientific research institutes. A total of more than 4200 disciplines from more than 390 units were evaluated. Among all the 95 primary disciplines, three universities top-ranked 40% of them, with PKU (16), Tsinghua (14) and Renmin University (9). Particularly, PKU’s 48 primary disciplines generated 16 in top 1, 35 in top 3 and 38 in top 5.