China, AI, and Rankings

Recently we have seen the crumbling of many illusions. It now seems hard to believe but only a few weeks ago we were assured that President Biden was as sharp as a fiddle or as fit as a tack or something. Also, the Russian economy was collapsing under the weight of Western sanctions. Or again, the presidential race was running neck and neck, and probably heading for a decisive Democrat vote, foretold by that state-of-the-art poll from Iowa.

An equally significant illusion was the supremacy of Western, especially Anglophone, science and scholarship. The remarkable growth of Asian research has often been dismissed as imitative and uncreative and anyway much less important than the amazing things Western universities are doing for sustainability and diversity.

The two big UK rankings, THE and QS, highly regarded by governments and media, have been instrumental in the underestimation of Chinese science and the overestimation of that of the West. Oxford is in first place in the THE world rankings and no other, while MIT leads the QS world rankings and no other. Indeed, Leiden Ranking, probably the most respected ranking among actual researchers, has them in 25^th and 91^st place for publications. 

The myopia of the Western rankers has been revealed by recent events in the world of AI. The release of the large language model (LLM) DeepSeek has caused much soul searching among western academics and scientists. It looks as good as Chat GPT and the others, probably better, and, it seems, very much cheaper. There will likely be more to come in the near future. The researchers and developers were mainly “researchers and developers from China’s elite universities, with minimal overseas education,” according to DeepSeek itself, including Peking University, Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, Beihang University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Nanjing University. There are some overseas links, Monash, Stanford, Texas, but these are less significant.

Some of the anguish or the excitement may be premature. DeepSeek may inspire another Sputnik moment, although that does seem rather unlikely at the moment, and Western companies and institutions may surge ahead again. Also, I suspect, the cheapness may have been exaggerated. Like its western counterparts, DeepSeek has places that it would prefer not to go to – Tiananmen Square and the Uighurs among others – and that could undermine its validity in the long run.

But it is a remarkable achievement nonetheless and it is yet another example of the emerging technological prowess of the Chinese economy. We have seen China build a network of high-speed railways. Compare that with the infamous Los Angeles to San Francisco railroad. Compare China’s military modernization with the state of European navies and armies.

We might add, compare the steady advance of Chinese universities in the output and quality of research and innovation compared to the stagnation and decline of western academia. The main western rankers, THE and QS, have consistently rated  American and British universities more favourably than those in Asia, especially China. Recently it seems that the two dominant rankers have been doing their best to lend a hand to western universities while holding back those in Asia. THE started their Impact rankings with the intention of allowing universities to show the wonderful things they are doing to promote sustainability, an opportunity that has been seized by some Canadian, Australian, and British universities but totally ignored by China. QS has introduced a new sustainability indicator into its world rankings, in which Chinese universities do not do well.

 

AI Rankings

QS and THE have been especially unobservant about the rise of China in computer science, and more specifically in the field of AI. This is in contrast to those rankings based largely on research and derived from public verifiable data.

There are currently four rankings that focus on AI. QS has a ranking for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence and it is very much dominated by Western universities. The top 20 includes 10 US institutions and none from Mainland China, although it does include the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Massachusetts Institute of Technology is in first place and the best Mainland university is Tongji in 36^th = place.

Now let’s look at EduRank, a rather obscure firm, probably located in California, whose methodology might be based on publications, citations and other metrics. Here the top 20 for AI has 15 US universities, with Stanford University in first place. The best performing Chinese university is Tsinghua at 9^th place.  

University Ranking of Academic Performance (URAP) is published by the Middle East Technical University in Ankara. Their most recent  AI ranking has Tsinghua in first place with Carnegie Mellon in 10^th. The top 20 has 12 Mainland universities and only three American.

The US News Best Global Universities ranking for AI is even more emphatic in its assertion of Chinese superiority. Twelve out of the top 20 universities for AI are Mainland Chinese, with Tsinghua at number one. The best US university was Carnegie Mellon University in 29^th  place, well behind a few universities from Australia, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

 

Computer Science Rankings

Turning to the broader field of Computer Science, the THE Computer Science rankings have Oxford in first place, MIT in third, and Peking University in twelfth. Similarly, QS has a Computer Science and Information Systems subject ranking, the most recent edition of which shows MIT first, Oxford fourth, and Tsinghua eleventh.

In contrast, in the National Taiwan University Computer Science Rankings Tsinghua is first, Stanford seventh, and Oxford 171^st (!). According to the Scimago Institutions Rankings for universities, Tsinghua is first for Computer Science,  MIT 9^th,  Oxford 22^nd.  The Iran-based ISC World University Rankings for Computer and Information Sciences place Tsinghua first, MIT 11^th, and Oxford 18^th. In the US News Best Global Universities Computer Science and Engineering ranking Tsinghua is first, MIT fifth, and Oxford 18^th.

In the Shanghai subject rankings MIT is still just ahead of Tsinghua, mainly because of the World Class Output metric which includes international academic awards since 1991.

It seems then that QS, THE, and EduRank have significantly exaggerated the capabilities of elite Western universities in AI and Computer Science generally and underestimated those of Chinese and other Asian schools. It seems ironic that THE and, to a lesser extent, QS are regarded as arbiters of excellence while URAP, Scimago, the National Taiwan University rankings, and even US News are largely ignored.