Only 7 of the World's Top 100 Universities Are in China... But Why Are They Afraid of the US?

Expanded from 2 to 7 in 2018
US decreased from 43 to 34
Korea's Seoul National University, Yonsei University, KAIST in top 100
UK's University of Oxford ranks 1st for 7 consecutive years

Tsinghua University building in China (Photo by Tsinghua University website)

[Asia Economy Reporter Jeong Hyunjin] China's growth in the field of higher education is remarkable. While the proportion of American universities within the world's top 100 universities is gradually decreasing, China's share is steadily increasing. With China already surpassing the United States in some key higher education indicators such as the number of paper citations, there are forecasts that China could become the leading country in higher education.

According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on the 11th (local time), the UK-based THE (Times Higher Education) announced in its 'THE World University Rankings 2023' that the University of Oxford maintained its number one position for the seventh consecutive year. Among the top 10 universities, three were British including Oxford, and seven were American.

The noteworthy point is the national distribution of universities within the top 100. The number of American universities decreased from 43 in 2018 to 34 this time, a reduction of nine. In contrast, the number of Chinese universities expanded from 2 to 7. Tsinghua University ranked 16th, Peking University 17th, and the University of Hong Kong 31st. Although the numerical difference between the two countries is still significant, experts analyze that the growth rate cannot be ignored.

Phil Baty, editor of THE, stated, "These numbers are very clear. The dominance that the United States has maintained for decades in global higher education and research is no longer a given," adding, "If the current trend continues, we will see China catching up with the United States within a few years."

Among Korean universities, Seoul National University ranked 56th, Yonsei University 78th, and KAIST 91st, all within the top 100.

This world university ranking announcement came after analyses showed that China had surpassed the United States as the country publishing the most academically recognized papers. China has steadily increased its academic publications since the mid-1990s. However, Western academia has traditionally evaluated the quality of Chinese publications as inferior compared to those from Western countries.

But the situation changed this year. According to the scientific journal Science, in August, the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP) of Japan analyzed the nationality of universities affiliated with the top 1% most cited papers worldwide from 2018 to 2020. China's contribution was 27.2%, while the United States accounted for 24.9%. The top 1% most cited papers represent the domain of the most influential scholars, including Nobel laureates.

In terms of total number of papers, China surpassed the United States in 2016, and within three years, it is evaluated that China has also surpassed the U.S. in the quality of papers. Caroline Wagner, a professor at Ohio State University, said, "This is truly remarkable. The research coming out of China is improving. We are seeing that China can conduct high-quality research and do so on a large scale." Professor Wagner added, "China's research is concentrated in materials science, chemistry, engineering, and mathematics, whereas American research focuses on clinical medicine, basic life sciences, and physics."

The differing fortunes of the U.S. and China in higher education are attributed to differences in their research and development (R&D) investment climates. According to U.S. federal data, last year the scale of U.S. R&D fell to its lowest in 70 years as a proportion of the federal budget. Meanwhile, China's R&D expenditure in 2019 was $526 billion, still less than the U.S. ($656 billion), but it has been rapidly expanding at an average annual rate of 10.6% from 2010 to 2019.

Dennis Simon, a professor of Chinese business and technology at Duke University, said, "China is a rising star. Engineers from Tsinghua University are almost on par with those educated at MIT." However, he noted that although China has about 3,000 universities, only a few are in the top tier, stating, "The top 300 universities in the U.S. are quite good, but in China, there is a significant gap after the top 50. There are not many universities that can substitute for the top-tier ones."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.