ABSTRACT
Achieving the Chinese nation's bright prospect on the road to revival is the dream for many generations. World-class universities are essential in developing a nation's competitiveness in the global knowledge economy. As the first multi-indicator global university ranking, Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) started the international ranking phenomenon. ARWU marked the era of global rankings, despite being developed to highlight the position of Chinese universities vis-a-vis competitor universities and being entirely focused on research, it has effectively become the 'gold standard'. The EU Research Headlines reported ARWU that "the universities were carefully evaluated using several indicators of research performance". The value of ARWU has been widely recognized to be a credible and transparent tool for monitoring universities' global competitiveness. The methodology of ARWU is transparent and stable, so that one can compare the performance of particular universities or countries throughout the years.
