China Subject Ratings 2023: welcome to the fourth edition

Browse the full results of the China Subject Ratings 2023

There’s no doubt that the biggest higher education story of the decade, if not longer, is the rise of China. The success of Chinese institutions when it comes to research, teaching and knowledge transfer has been extraordinary, as Times Higher Education has been tracking via our annual World University Rankings.

In the latest edition, published in summer 2022, China boosted its representation in the top 100 with seven universities, up from six the year before and three five years previously. Yet again, Tsinghua University and Peking University make it into the top 20. The country’s average score has also risen from 31 six years ago to almost 42.

The THE World University Rankings are the most robust and the most trusted in the world. They are based on 13 separate performance indicators, covering all the core activities of a world-class, research-led university, including teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.

At THE, we aspire to be the trusted partner of university strategic leaders and policymakers globally, to support institutional excellence in the round. So we understand that we must provide ever more rich and deep data analyses and powerful tools that help our community make the right decisions. We recognise that this requires us to continually refine and update what we do and to adapt our data to national contexts.

That’s why we produce the bespoke China Subject Ratings, and I’m delighted to present the fourth edition. The ratings draw on key metrics and data from the trusted and established THE World University Rankings, but they focus down to the narrow subject level rather than the institution-wide level.

The methodology was designed following wide consultation and dialogue with the Chinese higher education community. We have used Chinese subject groupings and adopted a Chinese subject taxonomy, as well as a Chinese version of our trusted global Academic Reputation Survey to drill down into the expert opinion of Chinese scholars and to amplify Chinese voices in the assessment. These steps mean that the China Subject Ratings will clearly and transparently align with China’s own national developmental and benchmarking requirements while allowing vital comparisons with the rest of the world’s universities.

We are delighted to continue to provide insights and intelligence to support excellence in Chinese, and global, universities, and in particular to provide this unprecedentedly deep and rich picture of performance across Chinese teaching and research.

phil.baty@timeshighereducation.com