Southwest Jiaotong University in Chengdu is best known for rail and transport engineering, and its graduate thesis rules read like an engineering specification. The core document is the Graduate Thesis Quality Management Regulation, issued as 西交校研〔2022〕16号, which replaced the 2021 version. Almost every number below comes from it.
The vocabulary first, because you will meet all three spellings when you search. Your thesis is a 学位论文 (xuéwèi lùnwén, degree thesis). The mandatory similarity check is 查重 (chá chóng) or, in SWJTU's own wording, 复制比检测 (duplication ratio detection). Anonymous external review is 盲审 (mángshěn) or 双盲评审 when both sides are anonymised. The oral defence is 答辩 (dábiàn), before a 答辩委员会 (defence committee).
What changed in 2025
The 学位法 (Academic Degrees Law) took effect on 1 January 2025 and repealed the 1980 学位条例. Two provisions matter to you directly.
Article 37 allows a university to refuse or revoke a degree where the thesis involves ghostwriting, plagiarism or fabrication, including after the degree has been awarded. Article 40 gives you a right to request 学术复核 (academic review) if you dispute an academic evaluation from reviewers, the defence committee or a results assessment. The university must reconvene experts and decide within 30 days, and that decision is final.
Most thesis guidance you will find online predates this law. Treat anything that cites only the 学位条例 as out of date.
The sequence, in order
SWJTU's process runs in fixed stages. You cannot skip one, and each has its own failure mode.
- 形式审查 (format review)
- 复制比检测 (similarity check)
- 论文预审 (internal pre-review)
- 论文外审 (external blind review)
- 答辩 (defence)
- 分委员会 then 校学位评定委员会 (school then university degree committee)
Format review
Fail this and you must revise for at least one month before resubmitting. It checks typos, unclear phrasing, non-standard abstracts, and the formatting of figures, tables, equations, references and layout.
Two language rules sit here:
- Theses should in principle be written in Chinese (simplified characters). 来华留学生 (international students studying in China) may use another language.
- The regulation requires a Chinese abstract of at least 2,000 characters for a doctoral thesis and at least 500 for a master's, with the English abstract identical in content.
There is a real conflict here worth raising with your school. The 2026 writing template says a master's Chinese abstract should generally not exceed 800 characters and fit on one page, and a doctoral one should not exceed 1,500 characters across two pages. That doctoral ceiling is below the 2022 regulation's floor. Ask the Graduate School degree office (学位办公室) which applies to your cohort before you write it twice.
Similarity check
Run before you apply for pre-review, and measured after your own published work is excluded.
| Degree | Humanities and social sciences (文科) | Engineering and other disciplines |
|---|---|---|
| Doctoral | ≤ 25% | ≤ 20% |
| Master's | ≤ 30% | ≤ 25% |
If you go over, your school can convene experts to judge whether the overlap is reasonable citation (合理引用). If they agree it is, you may still go to review and defence. That is a genuine safety valve, but it is a judgement call by people who have not read your thesis before, so do not rely on it.
One easy trap: if you revise for three months or more, you must run the similarity check again.
Pre-review
For doctoral theses this is either a 预答辩 (mock defence) or 专家评阅 (expert reading), with at least two experts, in principle all full professors and doctoral supervisors. Three outcomes:
- 合格送外审 across the board: go straight to external review
- Any 修改后复审: revise as instructed and go back to the same experts until cleared
- Any 不合格: revise for at least three months and reapply for pre-review
Master's pre-review is run by your school under the master's defence management rules, so the detail varies.
External blind review
This is the stage that most often costs a semester.
A doctoral thesis goes to at least five experts from other institutions, reviewing an anonymised version, all at full professor rank, with at least three being doctoral supervisors. Four outcomes are possible, and two of them count as a fail:
| Outcome | What happens |
|---|---|
| 同意答辩 (agree to defence) | Apply for the defence |
| 修改后答辩 (defend after revision) | Revise to the comments, supervisor approves, then apply |
| 修改后复审 (revise and re-review) | Fail. At least 1 month of revision, back to the same experts |
| 不予答辩 (defence refused) | Fail. At least 3 months of revision, then re-review. For each 不予答辩 opinion, two more experts are added, one of them the original reviewer |
If the re-review fails, you revise for at least six more months and go to a second re-review with five experts. Any fail at that point cancels your doctoral degree application eligibility.
Whether a master's thesis goes to external review at all is decided by your school.
If you are an international student, read this line. The regulation lists categories that must all go to double-blind peer review, and 来华留学研究生 (international graduate students) is one of them. So are candidates supervised by someone who had a flagged thesis in a national spot-check within the previous three years, candidates returning to defend after their registration lapsed, students of adjunct supervisors, and everyone in a degree programme's first three years. Plan on blind review, not around it.
Passing external review gives you three months to apply for the defence. Miss that window and the external review must be done again.
The defence
| Degree | Committee | Composition |
|---|---|---|
| Doctoral | 5 to 7 | Doctoral supervisors or full professors; at least two-thirds must be doctoral supervisors; chair must be a full-professor doctoral supervisor; 2 to 4 external experts, in principle from different institutions |
| Academic master's | At least 3 | All associate professor rank or above; chair associate professor or above |
| Professional master's | At least 3 | As above, plus at least 1 external expert |
Every committee has a secretary at lecturer rank or above. The secretary must send the final thesis, your written responses to the pre-review and external review comments, and the appointment letters to every member at least one week before the defence.
Your supervisor cannot be a committee member. The committee votes on both whether the thesis passes and whether to recommend the degree, and two-thirds of all members must agree.
If you fail, and more than half the committee agrees, a master's candidate may reapply for a defence within one year and a doctoral candidate within two years, after at least three months of revision. Failing the re-defence cancels your degree application eligibility.
You must apply for degree conferral within one year of passing the defence. Separately, doctoral candidates must complete the defence within ten years of enrolment and master's candidates within five, including suspended study.
重点审议: the ranking you do not see
After the defence, your school's degree sub-committee ranks all the theses in the batch by quality and pulls out the top 10% and bottom 10% for doctoral, and the top 5% and bottom 5% for master's, for focused review (重点审议).
Three situations put you in the bottom group automatically: returning to defend after exceeding the maximum study period, having a 修改后复审 or 不予答辩 in external review, or a recommendation from your defence committee. Theses selected for focused review are then spot-checked by experts arranged by the degree office.
The sub-committee needs two-thirds attendance and a two-thirds vote of those present. The university degree committee needs the same, plus a majority of all members. It can also defer a doctoral degree (缓授学位), meaning at least six months of further work, fresh review and defence, and a new application within two years, with one chance only.
Formatting, concretely
The 2026 template follows national standard GB/T 7713.2-2022. From the master's title-page and format file:
| Item | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Paper | A4 white, 70 to 80 gsm |
| Margins | 3.0 cm top, bottom, left and right; gutter 0 |
| Header and footer | 2 cm from the page edge |
| Printing | Double-sided from the Chinese abstract onwards; the main text starts on a right-hand page |
| Fonts | 宋体 for Chinese, Times New Roman for Latin characters and numerals |
| Line spacing | Fixed 20 pt for all paragraphs and headings from the Chinese abstract onwards |
| Paragraphs | Justified, with a 2-character first-line indent |
| Institution code | 10613, on the cover |
| Classification field | "公开" for non-classified and internal theses; classified theses use 密级★保密期限 |
References: a doctoral thesis generally needs at least 100, an academic master's at least 50, a professional master's at least 30. Foreign-language sources should generally be at least half the total, sources from the last five years at least a third, with some from the last two years and a number of theses or specialist monographs.
The 2026 revision added an author-year citation option alongside the existing numeric style, and updated the reference formatting. Doctoral candidates get both a hardcover (精装本) and softcover (平装本) cover template; master's candidates get a softcover only. Download all of these from the Graduate School downloads area.
For professional master's candidates, the thesis work guidance sets minimum lengths by thesis form: 25,000 characters for product development and 20,000 characters for engineering design. Reviewers must be associate professor rank or above, with one practitioner expert among the two or three.
Deposit and confidentiality
The template's authorisation page has you agree that SWJTU may retain your thesis, send copies to relevant national bodies, allow it to be consulted, and include all or part of it in databases for searching and downloading. You tick either 保密 (confidential, with a declassification year) or 不保密. Decide before you sign it, not after.
Pre-submission checklist
- Format review passed, or a month built into my schedule if not
- Chinese abstract length confirmed with the degree office, given the 2022 and 2026 conflict
- English abstract identical in content to the Chinese one
- Similarity below my discipline and level's ceiling
- Re-checked similarity if I revised for three months or more
- Reference count, foreign-language share and recency share all met
- Margins 3 cm all round, 20 pt fixed line spacing, correct fonts
- Classification field completed on the cover
- Defence applied for within three months of clearing external review
- Supervisor briefed that they cannot sit on my committee
- Revision explanation forms completed for pre-review, external review and defence
Where to ask
Your supervisor and your school's graduate office handle scope, methodology and any school-level rule that sits on top of the university one. The Graduate School degree office (学位办公室) answers formatting and template questions; its email address is published on the writing template page.
If the writing rather than the procedure is the problem, our thesis writing support works chapter by chapter, and pricing is published up front.
This guide is independent. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by or partnered with Southwest Jiaotong University.
