Located in Haikou, a beautiful coastal tourist city and a famous national historical and cultural city, Hainan Normal University accommodates two campuses—the South Longkun Road campus and the Guilinyang campus, covering an area of 2,066,666 square meters (3,100 mu). It is a key jointly-built university by China’s Ministry of Education and Hainan Province and is among the first batch of colleges and universities approved by the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the CPC to jointly build a school of journalism. It is also an important training base for outstanding teachers and senior professionals in Hainan province and is reputed as “a famous university in Hainan and a cradle for teachers”.

HNU enjoys a long history. The National Hainan Normal College was officially established in the autumn of 1949 as the first public college and university in Hainan.  Its predecessor can be traced back to the Qiongtai Academy in the 44th year of Emperor Kangxi of Qing Dynasty (1705); in 1952 it was renamed Hainan Normal Specialised School in the adjustment of colleges and universities; in 1986, It was reverted to the establishment of Hainan Normal College; in 1999, it was merged with Hainan Education College to establish a new Hainan Normal College; in 2007 it was renamed Hainan Normal University. Over the past 69 years, HNU has trained 170,000 talents of all kinds for the society, bearing in mind the responsibilities and missions of the normal university.

HNU has a complete training system. There are 21 colleges (including 19 undergraduate teaching colleges), 65 undergraduate specialties, 4 doctoral degree-granting first-level disciplines, 16 master's degree-granting first-level disciplines, and 9 master's degree programs, forming a complete talent training system for higher education. It forms the doctoral complete higher education personnel training system, the coordinated development of normal and non-normal specialties, and the coexistence of development of degree and non-degree courses. Enrollment is open to 31 provinces (including municipalities and autonomous regions) across the country with 18,203 undergraduates, 827 postgraduates and 356 overseas students.

The faculty of HNU is strong.  There are 924 full-time teachers, including 225 professors and 306 associate professors. Among the faculty, there are 3 academicians, 1 top-notch young person in the Ten Thousands Plan, 6 national candidates for the Ten Million Talents Project in the New Century, 2 young and middle-aged experts with outstanding contributions at the national level, 4 outstanding talents in the new century of the Ministry of Education, 14 experts with special allowances from the State Council, 1 expert directly contacted by the Central Committee, 3 excellent scientific and technological workers in the whole country��3 outstanding teachers, 1 national model teacher, 1 national model soldier, 1 national advanced individual, 1 national model worker, and 1 training team of the Ministry of Education's innovative team development plan; 6 outstanding talents, 54 leaders and top-notch talents in Hainan Province, 17 outstanding experts, 6 “100-person special” candidates in Hainan Province, and 11 candidates for the first level, 70 candidates for the second and third levels of the “515 Talents Project” in Hainan Province, 11 outstanding teachers in Hainan Province and 10 provincial teaching teams.

The implemented educational reform has been effective.  HNU adheres to the concept of “student-oriented” and actively promotes the comprehensive reform of education and teaching of “enrollment of large categories and diversion of training”. In recent years, 1 national experimental teaching demonstration center, 1 national innovative experimental area of talent training mode, 1pilot specialty of national comprehensive professional reform, 6 national characteristic specialties and 1 reform project of national excellent teacher training plan have been approved. Having won 1 second-class award for national teaching achievement of higher education and 3 second-class awards for national teaching achievement of basic education, which is the university in Hainan province that has won the most national teaching achievement prizes. With the continuous improvement of the quality of students' training, the employment rate has remained above 92%. It has been awarded Grade A of Employment and Entrepreneurship Assessment of Graduates from Universities and Colleges in Hainan Province from 2016 to 2017. It is the only public undergraduate college that has won this honor.

The scientific research level is relatively high. In the past three years, it has won 35 projects in The National Social Science Fund of China and 53 projects under the National Natural Science Foundation. The Ministry of Education has approved 16 projects at the ministerial level, including humanities and social sciences projects. It has won 238 provincial projects such as Hainan science and technology plan project and the provincial philosophy and social science plan series project. A total of 2,679 academic papers were published, 574 of which were included in SCI and CSSCI. It has won 44 provincial and ministerial awards, including 12 first-class awards.

HNU is committed to local development solidly. HNU takes serving basic education and regional economic and social development as its own duty. Since 2007, it has actively responded to the call of the Hainan Provincial Committee and the provincial government to carry out projects such as “replacing 500 normal students and in-service teachers with on-the-job support training” and “weekend mobile teacher training college” to help the development of basic education in Hainan, which was positively instructed by then State Councilor Liu Yandong. The National University Science Park has been built. Since the park was built, 210 enterprises have gone through the formalities of industrial and commercial registration, 109 of which have been founded by teachers and students of scientific research institutes in universities and colleges inside and outside the province. 33 research institutions and enterprise research and development centers have been settled in; 5 high-tech enterprises have been cultivated. There are 53 enterprises that have established cooperation with scientific research institutes of universities, helping enterprises in the park to transform 27 technological achievements and apply for 91 intellectual property rights. More than 18,000 people have been trained for innovation and entrepreneurship. 46 items supported by seed funds were found and screened. It also provides help to park enterprises to obtain investment and financing of more than 59 million yuan; the total output value of enterprises reached 350 million yuan in 2018.

Open-up School Running is developed forcefully. Giving full play to the location advantage of “The Belt and Road Initiative” as a strategic bridgehead, and issuing “The Belt and Road Initiative” to the whole world in nine languages has aroused widespread concern in the society. HNU has Hainan’s only preparatory college for overseas students. It has established a cooperative relationship with many universities such as Beijing Normal University, a strategic cooperative relationship with local governments such as Haikou City, a cooperative relationship with nearly 73  universities and educational institutions such as the University of New Mexico in the United States, a cooperation project for undergraduate education in radio and TV editing with St. Petersburg State University of Film and Television in Russia, a cooperation project for student exchange and credit recognition with 10 universities such as Taiwan’s National Pingtung University, and a joint Confucius Institute with Malaysia’s Sysmatic Education Group International ��SEGI��. HNU has also made full use of the “Three Brands” of National Hanban Training Base for Chinese Promotion Teachers in Southeast Asia, the Overseas Chinese Education Base of the State Council Overseas Chinese Affairs Office and the Philippine Research Center of the Ministry of Education to actively expand overseas exchanges.

During the “13th Five-Year Plan” period, HNU will seize the important strategic opportunities such as “The Belt and Road Initiative”, the Pilot Free Trade Zone, the Free Trade Port with Chinese Characteristics, the construction of an international tourism island, as well as the opportunities for the construction of provincial and provincial key universities. Taking serving lifelong education, serving green rising and serving cultural exchange and inheritance as its own responsibility, taking the “Top Ten Projects” as the starting point, HNU also will take teacher education as the foundation, reform and innovation as the driving force, and strive to build a modern high-level university characterized by distinctive teacher education.