The Academic Ranking of World Universities recently released its 2018 Global Ranking of Academic Subjects - covering 54 subjects under science, engineering, life sciences, medicine and social sciences–in which it ranks over 1,600 universities from 83 countries and regions. The American universities are still dominating the list across all disciplines with a total of 4,661 listings. Universities from mainland China are listed 1,700 times in total, ranking second in the world.

“Champion subjects” all under engineering

Mainland China universities produce 8 “champion subjects” and they are all under the 22 subjects covered byengineering. They are Tsinghua University’sCommunication Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology’s Instrument Science, Tongji University’s Civil Engineering, Jiaotong University’s Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, Wuhan University’s Remote Sensing Technology, theUniversity of Science and Technology Beijing’s Metallurgical Engineering, Beihang University’s Aerospace Engineering, and Beijing Jiaotong University’s Transportation Engineering.

It is obvious that Chinese universities are specialized in a very narrow range of subjects clustered under the sciences and engineering. They are not ranked in lists for social sciences because domestic universities do not usually issue papers on international English academic periodicals.

23 subjects of Shanghai Jiaotong Universities rank among top 100

17 Shanghai universities are named in the 2018 Global Ranking of Academic Subjects, accounting for 8% of all Chinese universities on the list and named 188 times, accounting for 11% among its Chinese counterparts.

Shanghai Jiaotong University has 38 subjects on the rankinglist, the most among Shanghai universities, while 23 of them are in the top 100. Tongji University and Fudan University both have 31 subjects listed, followed by East China Normal University (18), East China University of Science and Technology (16), Shanghai University (16) and Donghua University (10) among others.