[10] During the presidency of Chu Kochen from 1936 to 1949, the university retreated to Guizhou in Western China during the Second Sino-Japanese War,[11] before it moved back to Hangzhou in 1946.

[6] However, the proposed reforms under the new republican government following the 1911 revolution sparked controversy, causing the Institutes to cease student recruitment in 1912 and ultimately close in 1914.

[19] In 1947, Chang Ch'i-yun, a professor at NCKU, began attributing the university's origin to the Qiushi Academy, which was later acknowledge in the yearbook of the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China.

[23][22]Chu Kochen, a scholar with no previous political appointments, was recommended to Chiang Kai-shek by Chen Bulei for the presidency of NCKU in April 1936.

[25] In the second half of 1937, with the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the advance of the Japanese army, the university was forced to move from Hangzhou, first to Yishan, then to Zunyi, and finally to Meitan in Guizhou Province in southwest China.

During this period, the students of NCKU took on the responsibility of safeguarding Zhejiang's historical collections, including the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries housed in the Wenlan Pavilion, to prevent their capture by Japanese forces.

[27] In September, with the surrender of Japan, a group of NCKU professors led by Luo Zongluo were ordered by the government to take over the Japanese Imperial University in Taiwan.

But he eventually did not move to Taiwan and secretly stayed at the Academia Sinica building in Shanghai, until the Communist takeover of the NCKU campus in May 1949.

The communist education among faculty evolved into the Thought Reform and Three-anti and Five-anti Campaigns after Ma was appointed the president of Peking University in 1949.

[38] In 1967, at a meeting with Tan Zhenlin in Beijing, red guards from ZJU were told that Mao Zedong wanted to protect Jiang Hua in this revolution.

After hearing of the massacre in Beijing, the student protesters blocked the railway at Nanxingqiao station with their bodies for three days before negotiating with the vice-governor, Chai Songyue.

In 1997, Wang Ganchang and Bei Shizhang in Beijing, and Su Buqing and Tan Jiazhen in Shanghai, wrote a joint letter to the then General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Jiang Zemin, recommending a merger of the four universities.

As of 2022, there are several companies affiliated to the group have been publicly listed, including Insigma Technology, United Mechanical & Electrical, and Shenghua Land.

[43] In October 2005, the university's Hubin campus was sold at the price of 2.46 billion Chinese yuan to Kerry Properties for commercial complex development.

An open letter by the alumni says, "Zhejiang University needs an upright and capable academic leader, not a mediocre chief executive.

"[52] In November 2013, Chu Jian, vice president of the university who was rumoured to be behind the rare petition, was arrested for bribery,[53] yet he was not tried until 2017 and was soon released after he was sentenced to 3 years in jail which had almost been fulfilled by the time of trial.

[54] In September 2013, amid extensive objection from local residents and university alumni, part of Huajiachi campus was sold at the price of 13.67 billion Chinese yuan, making the land the most expensive in the city's history.

[55] In July 2020, the university came under intense criticism for allowing an ethnic minority student convicted of rape to remain enrolled.

In March 2021, tech tycoon Colin Huang donated $100 million to support the university's Shanghai Institute for Advanced Study.

[67] The gigantic, five-arched South Gate was built with donations from alumni, but widely regarded unfit for the purpose among ZJU students.

The campus hosts Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, School of Art and Archaeology, and Zhejiang University Press.

During the wartime relocation, the university also temporarily used the campuses in Jiande in 1937, Ji'an, Taihe Yishan in 1938, before it finally arrived in Meitan and Zunyi, Guizhou in southwest China in early 1940.

As Doctrine of the Mean says, seeking truth is 'to study extensively, inquire prudently, think carefully, distinguish clearly, and practice earnestly.

President Lu Yongxiang explained in 1992,[citation needed] Strictly speaking, pursuing innovation is included in seeking truth, [...] but people often regard seeking truth as being practical, emphasising the acknowledgement and application of the existing body of knowledge and the objective analysis and knowledge of the reality, with no emphasis on being creative and innovative.During the 19 November 1938 university council meeting, the neo-Confucianism scholar Ma Yifu, who was teaching at Chekiang was invited by President Chu to be the lyric writer of the university anthem, upon Chu's advice.

The president hosts university council meeting to decide on teaching and learning, scientific research and administrative issues.

The School of Basic Medical Sciences offers a joint undergraduate programs in biomedicine and bioinformatics at International Campus.

[143][144][145] Teaching at Chu Kochen Honors College and international dual degree programs at Haining are supervised and regulated by their own responsible committees.

Degree awarding is based on academic credits requirement for compulsory and elective courses, which a student must both fulfill to graduate.

[151][152] Notable alumni of the college include entrepreneur Colin Huang and the current president of Zhejiang University Wu Zhaohui.

Research at Zhejiang University spans 12 academic disciplines: agriculture, art, economics, education, engineering, history, law, literature, management, medicine, natural sciences, and philosophy.