The origins of Renmin University of China date back to Shanbei Public School (陕北公学), established in 1937 by the Chinese Communist Party in order to "bring up hundreds of thousands of revolutionary comrades to meet the needs of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression.

[6] Wu Yuzhang, Cheng Fangwu, Guo Yingqiu, Yuan Baohua, Huang Da, Li Wenhai, Ji Baocheng, and Chen Yulu had successively held the position of the president of the university.

[9] The university library has 2.5 million holdings, and is recognized as the Information Center of Arts Literatures by the Ministry of Education.

[20] The Academy is a government think-tank tasked with developing financial inclusion mechanisms for China.

[20] On 25 October 2017, Renmin University established a Xi Jinping Thought research center, the first of its kind.

In 2022, Wang Wen visited Russian-annexed Crimea amid the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

[48] The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2014 placed Renmin 5th in China (after Peking, Tsinghua, University of Science and Technology of China, and Fudan), 13th in emerging countries, 32nd in Asia, and inside the top 250 in the world.

[54] According to the latest evaluation by the Chinese Ministry of Education RUC ranked No.1 among all Chinese universities for 9 disciplines, which include theoretical economics, applied economics, law and legal studies, political science, sociology, journalism, statistics, business management and public administration.

[55] RUC is also entitled 25 national key disciplines (ranked number 5 in China), 13 national key research bases of humanities and social sciences (ranked number 1 in China), and 6 national teaching and research bases of fundamental arts disciplines (ranked number 1 in China).

[55] Renmin has taken a leading position among Chinese universities in the number of social science and arts and humanities-related majors.

[66] As of 2024, the U.S. News & World Report ranked Renmin 4th in China, 5th in Asia, and 28th globally in economics and business.

Every year since 2010, study abroad students and faculty from Rutgers exchange with their Renmin University counterparts.