Chinese universities broaden international outlook

According to ESI, Zhejiang University had eight disciplines at the very top of the leading 1,000 at the end of last year, ranking first among all mainland universities.

Wu Zhaohui, the university's president, said it would focus more on originality and innovation in academic research to improve, make greater breakthroughs in cutting-edge technology and put forward China's solutions to tackle technological bottlenecks.

However, Peking University's Chen said universities should not only focus on rankings, as these cannot truly reflect their comprehensive strengths. They usually only consider papers published in English, and various rankings focus on different aspects, so one university may have different rankings in lists published by a number of organizations, he said.

Moreover, the number of papers alone cannot truly reflect academic achievement, as it takes a lot of time to make major technological breakthroughs and carry out original research, Chen said.

What is more important than rankings is for universities to have confidence in themselves and stick to their development strategy. As long as their overall strength improves, rankings become secondary, he added.