The strength of Chinese universities continues to grow, with 25 of the country’s institutions achieving their best ever position in this year’s Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings. Their stellar performance is undeniable: Tsinghua University retained its place as Asia’s best university, followed by Peking University. In total, mainland Chinese institutions accounted for five of Asia’s Top 10.

They are accompanied by Singapore’s National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University in third and fourth place respectively; The University of Tokyo at #5; University of Hong Kong and The Chinese University of Hong Kong are ranked #6 and #9.

Overall, the Top 10 remained mostly the same as last year, with only China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University falling from #7 to #10, pushing up those in between.

Seoul National University (SNU), South Korea’s best performing institution, came in at #15, down one place from last year. In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals is ranked #31, up from #37 last year, while the United Arab Emirates’ Khalifa University is #37, up from #40 in 2024.

This year’s rankings highlight how far China has come, spurred by the country’s Double First-Class initiative. This programme was launched in 2015, with 42 identified as potential “world-class” universities. Since then, China has poured 167 billion yuan (Rs.1.98 lakh crore) of funding into these institutions — investment that seems to be paying off.

The Double First-Class initiative is the latest in a series of policies aimed at strengthening a select group of Chinese institutions. Before this current phase were the 211 and 985 programmes, which stretch back to the 1990s. “Without such programmes, the China miracle in university management science would not have occurred,” says Simon Marginson, professor of higher education at Oxford University.

It is a strategy that other Asian countries have attempted to follow, albeit with arguably less success. India launched the Institutes of Eminence (IoE) scheme in 2018, an excellence initiative that aimed to elevate a small group of public and private universities. But its future is doubtful.

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