C9 League

C9 League schools are allocated special resources, and have special arrangements for sharing resources with one another.[4] They have a higher fraction of elite academics who have been awarded one of China's top academic honors, the Thousand Talents Plan Professorship and the Changjiang (Yangtze River) Professorship, and often have a few who have been awarded both.[1] C9 League schools receive substantial funding from both national and local governments in order to build new research centers, improve facilities, hold international conferences, attract world-renowned faculty and visiting scholars, and help Chinese faculty attend conferences abroad.[5] Most of these C9 universities are ranked among the top 200 universities in the world according to the Academic Ranking of World Universities 2018/19, the QS World University Rankings 2019/2020 and the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2019/20.[6][7][8]

• Tsinghua University
• Peking University
• Fudan University
• Shanghai Jiao Tong University
• University of Science and Technology of China
• Zhejiang University
• Nanjing University
• Xi'an Jiaotong University
• Harbin Institute of Technology

The Chinese government has four main categories of elite universities. The first and largest of these groups is Project 211, which was established in 1995 to strengthen research standards in China’s top universities, with universities that exceed a threshold receiving significantly increased funds.[2] As of 2018, 116 higher education institutions were members of Project 211.[2]

The second, established in 2015, is the Double First Class University Plan to create 42 world class universities by 2050.[9] A third, more selective group is Project 985, established in 1998. The Chinese government included 39 universities in Project 985, and capped membership to these 39 in 2011.[2]

The final and most selective group is the C9 League, established by the Chinese central government on May 4, 1998 as part of Project 985 with the goal of advancing Chinese higher education by formalizing an elite group of universities to foster better students and share resources.[4] Nine universities were selected and allocated funding, and on October 10, 2009, the relationship between these nine universities was formalized into China's C9 League.[10][11]

• List of universities in China
• Oxbridge, Britain's two oldest universities, Oxford and Cambridge
• Group of Eight, formal group of eight universities in Australia.
• Golden triangle, informal grouping of six universities in Oxford, Cambridge, and London
• Ivy League, a formal grouping of elite private universities in the United States
• Imperial Universities, a grouping of elite older universities in Japan
• Institutes of National Importance, top public universities in India.
• Russell Group, a formal grouping of advanced universities in the UK
• TU9, the alliance of nine leading Technical Universities in Germany
• SKY (universities), a group of prestigious Korean universities
• Project 211, an earlier program for recognizing top universities
• Project 985, a larger set of top universities
• Double First Class University Plan, a scheme for improving 42 of China's top universities