Chinese universities enhance their global standing

The latest university rankings show that Chinese universities have been improving in overall academic performance.

The 2020 Academic Ranking of World Universities, the 18th annual report, was released on Aug 15 by ShanghaiRanking Consultancy.

The ARWU has been employed or cited by various governmental departments and academic institutions in previous years. These include the 2018 Beijing civil service exam, the European Commission in its Science, Research and Innovation Performance in the EU 2018 report, and the University of Manchester in its 2014/15 Stocktake Report.

Harvard University has been ranked first globally for 18 consecutive years. Second place, this year, goes to Stanford University, also from the United States, followed by Cambridge University from the United Kingdom.

ARWU lists the top 1,000 universities worldwide, of which 144 on the Chinese mainland are on the 2020 list, an increase of more than 40 compared to last year. Six Chinese universities entered the top 100, with Tsinghua University ranking 29th, overtaking Kyoto University from Japan as the second-best Asian university. The University of Tokyo remains the top-ranking university in Asia.

Also among top 100 are Peking University, Zhejiang University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Two Chinese universities entered the top 100 this year for the first time-Fudan University came 100th, and University of Science and Technology of China jumped from top 150 to the 73rd, which has substantially progressed in the number of publications it has issued and highly-cited researchers, the consultancy says.

The consultancy hails the consistency of its methodology, which has not changed since 2004. Its four criteria are the quality of education, quality of faculty, research output and per capita performance. The six indicators used are the number of alumni or members of staff winning the Nobel Prize and the Fields Medal, the quantity of articles published in the journals Nature and Science, the number of highly-cited researchers, articles published in leading publications and performance per capita.

"The system ensures that the ranking changes of universities completely rely on their objective performance on various indicators," the consultancy says.

Thirteen more universities from the Chinese mainland, including Beijing Jiaotong University, entered the top 500 list this year, compared to last year.

Twenty-four universities from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, appeared on the list, with 10 of them in the top 500.

"When the ARWU was first published in 2003, only nine universities from the Chinese mainland entered the top 500; none of them entered the top 200. In 2020, 71 mainland universities were included in the top 500, which is nearly eight times the 2003 figure," reports the consultancy. "Comparing the numbers of these two years, we can see the great improvements Chinese universities have made in terms of overall performance and global impact."

The improvement of Chinese universities is not only shown from the ARWU, but also from other internationally acknowledged rankings, such as the QS World University Rankings.

Tsinghua University, for instance, has broken the record in QS ranking for Chinese universities this year, rising from the 16th place to 15th, and the number of Chinese mainland universities in the top 1,000 has increased from 42 to 51.