Shanghai Fudan University celebrated its centennial anniversary Saturday and Chinese President Hu Jintao sent a letter to express his congratulation to the university.

The celebration attracted about 5,000 people from all walks of life, including the presidents of about 100 world prestigious colleges and universities from home and abroad.

Fudan University is the first university set up by the Chinese people independently and it has shared the same fate along with China in the past century, Hu said in his letter.

The university has become more influential in the past century especially after the founding of the new China in 1949 and it has cultivated a lot of outstanding intellectuals for the country, Hu said.

Wu Bangguo, chairman of the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress (NPC), attended the ceremony and made a speech.

The course of great changes in Fudan reveals that a university's fate is closely related with a country's fate, said Wu at the ceremony. The development of the country is a precondition for the university's development, while the development of the universities is also an important support to the development of the country, he said.

"We are very proud of our alma mater and we also feel the responsibilities to contribute more for the society and the country, as graduates from Fudan," said Li Daqian, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, at the ceremony.

Fudan University was founded in 1905 with four classrooms and 160 students. Now it's one of the prestigious universities in China with about 30,000 students.

(Xinhua News Agency September 25, 2005)