LONDON - A total of 66 institutions from China were included in a world university ranking published here Tuesday by the Times Higher Education.

According to the 14th annual edition of its World University Rankings, the list of the top 1,000 universities from 77 countries and regions, there are two Chinese mainland institutions in the top 30 for the first time and China boasts more universities in the rankings than ever before.

Chinese universities on the rise

Key institutions that moved up the list from last year's rankings include Peking University, which went from 29th to 27th place, reaching the same rank as the University of Edinburgh and New York University. Tsinghua University increased from 35th place to 30th, overtaking the University of Melbourne, Georgia Institute of Technology, and LMU Munich. Fudan University climbed 39 places to 116th position.

China's Hong Kong has six universities in this year's ranking, including three in the top 100 and two in the top 50. The University of Hong Kong is Hong Kong's number one institution, ranking number 40.

Chinese mainland is now the sixth most-represented in the top 200. It has seven universities in this elite group, up from four last year, becoming Asia's most successful territory at the top of the ranking.

Phil Baty, editorial director of the rankings from Times Higher Education, said: "Our rankings show that the Asian giant's higher education improvement is real and growing. With two top-30 representatives for the first time in the 13-year history of the rankings, China's leading universities are truly now part of the global elite and overtaking prestigious universities in the US, UK, and Europe."

An expert in global university rankings for 20 years, Baty said that the rise of Chinese higher education had been driven by a large investment in science and technology subjects.

"Chinese universities are doing outstanding work in science, technology, mathematics, life sciences," Baty said, adding that the next phase for China would be to strengthen its arts and humanities and social sciences programs. "I think arts and humanity subjects are very important to create the balance and to provide the creativity needed to push research to the next level. So that's the challenge. Another challenge is perhaps to be even more international. Chinese universities have been wonderful in bringing back Chinese scholars from America, from Europe to come back to China to build wonderful universities."