Zhejiang University, one of the most prestigious Chinese universities, nicknamed the “Cambridge of the East”, has just overtaken Harvard at the top of the “Leiden Ranking”, a survey which aims to measure the“scientific impact†universities. It’s a symptom of a worrying trend affecting American academia, according to The New York Times.
Harvard has fallen to third place in the rankings and the universities that are rising “are not its American counterparts, but Chinese universities which regularly progress in the rankings favoring the volume and quality of research work†, observes daily life.
In addition to Zhejiang University, seven other Chinese establishments appear this year in the top 10 of this ranking established by the Center for Scientific and Technological Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands and based in particular on the number of articles published by research teams in scientific journals.
A completely reversed situation compared to the beginning of the 2000s, underlines The New York Times since seven American universities were then among the top ten. And Zhejiang University, already at the head of Chinese universities, did not appear until the 25e rang.
A “relative†decline
The problem does not come from a decline in scientific production in American universities, but from the spectacular development of research capacities in Chinese universities. “China invests billions of dollars in its universities and deploys considerable efforts to make them attractive to foreign researchers†, which was not the case twenty years ago, explains the American daily.
In a speech he gave in 2024, President Xi Jinping explicitly linked a nation’s global power to its dominance in science. “The scientific and technological revolution is closely linked to the game of superpowers†, he declared. In the fall of 2025, China launched a new visa (the “K visa†) specifically aimed at graduates of the world’s best universities in science and technology, allowing them to come study or do business in China.
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