Established in 1952 as the Northwest College of Russian and later Xi’an Foreign Languages Institute, Xi’an International Studies University (XISU) is one of the four oldest foreign language teaching institutions in P. R. China and the only international studies-based university in the northwest region of the country, covering a large geographical area spanning from Shaanxi to Xinjiang. 

XISU offers its 24,000 students 39 undergraduate degree programs, with the humanities as the core of its curriculum while covering other areas such as social sciences, business, law, tourism, international relations, mass communication and education.

Based on its original mission of foreign language teaching, XISU has expanded its offering of studies in languages and cultures, covering European languages such as English, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish; Slavic languages such as Russian, Middle-Eastern languages such as Arabic; as well as Asian languages such as Korean and Japanese, Hindi and Thai.

At the graduate level, XISU offers 21 Master of Arts programs, with majors in linguistics, literature, cross-cultural communication, translation studies, business, tourism and teaching Chinese to speakers of other languages. Besides the Ph.D. programs jointly offered with other three institutions in France and Germany, XISU has been approved by the central government to offer its own Ph.D. programs in linguistics and literature, scheduled to begin enrolling students in 2012.

As committed to research as it is to teaching, XISU promotes research in its faculty and has built several research institutes, including the European and American Literatures Research Center, the Linguistics and Applied Linguistics Research Center, International Education Institute, and the Human Geography Institute. The university house journals, Foreign Language Teaching, The School Journal of XISU, and Human Geography are among top-tier academic journals in China. Many of the XISU faculty are leading scholars in their own fields of study.

Being an international studies university, XISU values international exchange. It has had exchange programs with 118 universities in America, Canada, Japan, France, Spain, Germany, Korea, Singapore, and the United Kingdom.   

With a history of more than half a century, XISU has provided the Northwest Region and the rest of China tens of thousands of highly-trained personnel in various professions. Its alumni are found in every part of China and in many parts of the world, some of whom have become nationally and internationally recognized figures in politics, administration, the academia, as well as other fields.