The new campus of Renmin University of China located in Tongzhou district in southeastern Beijing, was officially put into operation on Saturday.

The new campus has a construction scale of 1.05 million square meters, and about 500,000 square meters of buildings has already completed construction, enabling the independent operation.

In September, RUC Tongzhou campus welcomed its first batch of freshmen from the School of Finance, School of Economics and School of Applied Economics.

Zhang Donggang, Party secretary of RUC, said the planning and construction of the new campus represent a fundamental improvement in the university's operational conditions.

RUC will gradually relocate research institutions, academic forums and resources to the Tongzhou campus, fostering in-depth collaboration with the city and surrounding areas, thus creating a distinctive academic cultural advantage, he said.

"It signifies a breakthrough in key projects of the city's sub-center development and highlights the university's efforts in alleviating non-capital functions of Beijing, supporting the national strategy of coordinated development in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region," Zhang said.

Yu Yingjie, a member of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China Beijing Municipal Committee, said the Tongzhou campus of RUC is currently the only "Double First-Class" university, which is world-class with first-class disciplines, in Beijing's sub-center, with a solid foundation and potential for driving regional development.

Fang Biling contributed to this story.