Hao Ping, Party secretary of Peking University, has been named the university's 28th president, according to the website of the Ministry of Education on Tuesday.

Hao, who has served as the university's Party secretary since December 2016, succeeds Lin Jianhua, who led PKU for more than three years.

Qiu Shuiping, 56, was named the university's new Party secretary. Qiu has served as president of the Shanxi High People's Court since January 2017. Previously, he worked as a senior official in Beijing from 1996 to 2017.

PKU, which was established in 1898, is one of the country's top universities and often viewed as a fountainhead of avant-garde thinking tied to modern China's development.

Scholars known worldwide have led the university, including Cai Yuanpei, Hu Shih, Ma Yinchu and Jiang Menglin, the longest-serving president who held the post from 1930 to 1945.

Hao, 59, is a native of Shandong province. He entered PKU in 1978, earning a bachelor's degree in history in 1982. He then worked as a staff member in the president's office until 1986 and was deputy director of the office of student affairs until 1991.

He earned a master's degree in history at the University of Hawaii in 1995, after which he joined the faculty at Peking University. He obtained a doctorate in international relations at the university in 1999.

Hao became the vice-president of PKU in 2001 and was appointed as the president of Beijing Foreign Studies University in 2005.

In 2009, he was appointed as the vice-minister of education. He held the post until returning to PKU as its Party secretary.

Lin entered PKU in 1978, earning bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in chemistry before starting his teaching and research career in 1986.

After spending five years in Germany and the United States from 1988 to 1993, doing postdoctoral research, Lin returned to PKU as an associate professor in 1993.

He served in a variety of posts from 1995 to 2010. He led Chongqing University from 2010 to 2013 after leaving PKU and was appointed president of Zhejiang University in June 2013.

"I have studied and worked at Peking University for 40 years. I love and am forever grateful for the university," he said on Tuesday.

Separately, Hu Jinbo, 58, was appointed as Party secretary of Nanjing University on Tuesday. He was vice-chairman of the Jiangsu Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.