Southwest University (SWU) is a key comprehensive university, under the direct administration of the Ministry of Education. It was newly established in July 2005 through the incorporation of former Southwest China Normal University and Southwest Agricultural University upon the approval of the Ministry of Education. SWU is situated nearby the beautiful Jialing River, and is located at the foot of Jinyun Mountain, a state level scenic spot, in Beibei District, Chongqing Municipality.

Before being united, Southwest China Normal University and Southwest Agricultural University were neighbors with only a wall separating the two institutions. Both universities had a long historic relationship, which could be traced back to their common origin, i.e. East Sichuan Teachers College in 1906.

Southwest China Normal University and Southwest Agricultural University have already cultivated a variety of graduates, more than 200,000 since their establishment. On the basis of long-term building and development, both universities formed their special characteristics in teachers' education and agricultural education respectively.

The universities excel in a number of disciplines including pedagogy, psychology and agronomy. Among them, the silkworm genome research takes the lead in the world, and fundamental psychology and pedagogy have taken a national lead. Other great achievements include natural fallowing, silkworm gene bank, southwest ethnic education and psychology research, and human time cognition and so on. Hundreds of new technologies and achievements have brought with them outstanding social and economic benefits.

The following statistical data offer a profile of SWU:
Campus area of 9,000 Chinese mu (= 600 hectares), with the facilities area of almost 1,500,000 square meters;
A library with 3,800,000 volumes of book
2 state level key disciplines
9 first level disciplines and 66 specialties that can offer Ph.D. degrees
9 post-doctoral research centers
159 specialties that can offer Master's degrees and 5 professional Master's degrees
36 provincial/ministry level key disciplines, 27 provincial/ministry level key laboratories
5 key liberal arts research bases of Chongqing municipality
97 Bachelor's degrees
In total, there are 11 disciplinary categories, covering 40 first level subjects.

Southwest University has a variety of students numbering over 50,000. Its scale and levels are ranked ahead of other higher education institutions in the western China. Till now, Southwest University has had close communication and cooperation in research and academic studies with international universities and/or institutes from more than 30 countries and/or regions, including the US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, Australia, Russia and Canada etc., and enjoys long term partnership with over 20 of these universities.