In recent months, headlines announcing Zhejiang University as the world’s top-ranked university—followed closely by Shanghai Jiao Tong University—have sparked both admiration and anxiety across global academic circles. These claims originate largely from the CWTS Leiden Ranking 2025, a bibliometrics exercise that measures universities primarily on research output: the volume of publications, citations, and the proportion of papers among the world’s top 10 percent most cited. By this yardstick, seven to eight Chinese universities dominate the global top ten, with Harvard University relegated to third place.
While such rankings do not offer a holistic assessment of teaching quality, campus life, or humanities scholarship—areas emphasised by broader rankings such as QS, Times Higher Education (THE), or the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)—they do signal a profound shift in the global research landscape. Claims that China occupies 19 or 20 of the top 25 positions may be exaggerated, but the broader trend is indisputable: China has emerged as the world’s leading producer of high-impact scientific research.
This phenomenon invites a deeper question, particularly for India: How did China achieve this transformation so rapidly, and why has India—despite comparable population size, civilisational depth, and talent—lagged behind?
China’s Research Boom: A Product of the Developmental State
China’s rise in global research rankings is not accidental, nor is it solely the result of cultural traits such as discipline or respect for education. Rather, it is the outcome of deliberate, centralised state intervention, executed with long-term clarity and political will.
Beginning in the 1990s, the Chinese government launched a series of targeted initiatives to build globally competitive universities. Project 211 focused on strengthening approximately 100 universities for the 21st century, while Project 985 concentrated massive resources on an elite subset, including Peking University and Tsinghua University. These were not symbolic programs; they involved sustained funding for laboratories, faculty salaries, international collaborations, and infrastructure.
This approach culminated in the Double First-Class Initiative, which aimed not merely to build world-class universities but also world-class disciplines. The emphasis was unapologetically utilitarian: science, engineering, medicine, artificial intelligence, quantum physics, materials science, and space technology—fields aligned with national strategic goals.
By 2025, China’s research and development expenditure reached approximately 2.8 percent of GDP, surpassing the OECD average and dwarfing India’s spending. Equally important was how the money was used. Faculty were incentivised—sometimes aggressively—to publish in high-impact international journals, predominantly in English. Promotions, bonuses, and institutional prestige were tightly linked to bibliometrics outcomes.
Talent recruitment formed another pillar. Programs such as the Thousand Talents Plan lured Chinese-origin scholars and foreign researchers back to China with competitive salaries, modern labs, housing benefits, and political backing. Former MIT president Rafael Reif observed that the quantity and quality of Chinese research papers were “outstanding” and increasingly “dwarfing” U.S. output—a striking admission from a leader of America’s premier technological institution.
The Educational Pipeline and Cultural Reinforcement in China
China’s higher education success cannot be separated from its pre-university pipeline. The gaokao, one of the world’s most competitive examinations, channels the country’s brightest students into elite universities. While often criticized for stress and rigidity, the gaokao ensures that top institutions consistently receive high-performing students with strong foundations in mathematics and science.
Culturally, Confucian traditions reinforce respect for scholarship, hierarchy, and collective achievement. Academic success is not merely an individual aspiration but a familial and societal duty. In the Chinese political context, this cultural capital is harnessed by the state to serve national objectives.
Crucially, academic freedom is constrained, particularly in the social sciences and humanities. However, in STEM fields—the backbone of global rankings—this constraint has had limited impact on productivity. In fact, the authoritarian system allows the Chinese state to prioritise outcomes over process, efficiency over debate, and coordination over autonomy.
President Xi Jinping has explicitly linked higher education and research to national rejuvenation and superpower competition, framing breakthroughs in AI, semiconductors, biotechnology, and space as existential imperatives. Universities are thus not autonomous ivory towers but integral components of state strategy.
India’s Higher Education Journey Since 1947: Aspirations and Achievements
India’s post-independence higher education story began under vastly different conditions. In 1947, the country inherited a colonial system designed primarily to produce clerks and administrators. There were only 17 universities and 636 colleges, catering to about 238,000 students, in a society with a literacy rate of roughly 14 percent.
The early Indian leadership, particularly under Jawaharlal Nehru, viewed higher education as central to nation-building. Institutions such as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)—beginning with IIT Kharagpur in 1951—were modelled on global exemplars like MIT. The University Grants Commission (UGC), established in 1956, aimed to coordinate funding and maintain standards. Later, the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) strengthened management education.
From the 1960s to the 1980s, India expanded its university system to support public-sector industrialisation, scientific research, and administrative capacity. The post-1991 economic liberalisation phase brought a surge of private institutions, dramatically expanding access.
By the early 2020s, India had over 1,168 universities and more than 45,000 colleges, with a Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) rising from 0.4 percent in 1950–51 to approximately 28.4 percent in 2021–22. Enrolment among historically marginalised communities increased significantly, and gender parity in higher education was nearly achieved—an extraordinary social accomplishment.
Degeneration Amid Expansion: Structural Weaknesses in India’s System
Yet this quantitative success masked deep qualitative weaknesses. Unlike China’s selective concentration of resources, India pursued massification without commensurate investment. Public expenditure on tertiary education hovers around 1.5–1.6 percent of GDP, spread thinly across thousands of institutions.
Administratively, Indian universities suffer from excessive regulation but insufficient support. Multiple agencies—the UGC, AICTE, state governments, accreditation bodies—exercise overlapping control, often stifling innovation while failing to enforce excellence. Vice-chancellor appointments are frequently politicised, prioritising ideological alignment or bureaucratic seniority over academic leadership.
Research output remains limited. Faculty are burdened with heavy teaching loads, administrative duties, and compliance requirements, leaving little time for sustained research. Funding is fragmented, slow, and risk-averse. Unlike China, India lacks a robust ecosystem of postdoctoral positions, research assistants, and well-funded labs.
Socially, India’s commitment to affirmative action through reservations has been both a moral necessity and a policy challenge. While essential for equity and representation, poorly designed implementation—especially in faculty recruitment—has sometimes created tensions between social justice goals and research competitiveness. This tension is often exploited politically, rather than addressed through systemic capacity-building.
The brain drain compounds the problem. India produces world-class researchers, but many pursue careers abroad due to better funding, autonomy, and infrastructure. Ironically, Indian-origin academics power leading laboratories in the United States, Europe, and increasingly China itself.
Political Systems and Academic Outcomes: Democracy vs Centralisation
The contrast between China and India reflects not merely educational policy differences but divergent political systems. China’s authoritarian model enables swift decision-making, long-term planning, and ruthless prioritisation. Resources are concentrated, dissent is minimised, and outcomes are tightly monitored.
India’s democratic framework, by contrast, prioritises inclusion, debate, and decentralisation. These are strengths for creativity and critical thinking but can become weaknesses in execution. Policy continuity suffers from electoral cycles, coalition politics, and federal fragmentation. Universities become arenas for ideological contestation rather than protected spaces for knowledge creation.
Where China treats universities as strategic assets, India often treats them as administrative units or political battlegrounds. Where China rewards performance relentlessly, India often equalises outcomes regardless of merit or productivity.
The National Education Policy 2020: A Course Correction?
Recognising these shortcomings, India unveiled the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, the most ambitious reform effort in decades. The NEP seeks to raise GER to 50 percent by 2035, promote multidisciplinary education, phase out rigid silos, and grant greater autonomy to high-performing institutions.
Initiatives such as the Institutes of Eminence, the National Research Foundation, and encouragement of foreign university campuses signal a renewed emphasis on research and global integration. The policy also aims to simplify regulation and reduce bureaucratic micromanagement.
However, policy intent must translate into consistent funding, political restraint, and administrative reform. Without increased public investment—ideally approaching the long-promised 6 percent of GDP—and genuine autonomy in appointments and curriculum design, NEP risks becoming another well-written document with limited impact.
Lessons from China—Without Imitation
China’s experience offers lessons, not a blueprint. India cannot—and should not—replicate China’s authoritarian model. Academic freedom, social diversity, and democratic debate are long-term assets for innovation. But India can learn from China’s focus, scale, and seriousness.
Key imperatives include:
Concentrating resources on a limited number of research-intensive projects, India’s higher education revival hinges on a few clear imperatives. Resources must be concentrated on a limited number of research-intensive universities capable of competing globally, rather than being spread thinly across the system. University governance needs professionalisation, with leadership insulated from political interference and guided by academic merit. Research careers must be made globally competitive through stable funding, clear incentives, and world-class infrastructure. At the same time, India must actively reverse brain drain by creating structured pathways for top scholars to return and thrive. Finally, equity should be strengthened through serious preparatory investment, not by diluting academic standards, ensuring inclusion and excellence reinforcement rather than undermine each other.
Conclusion: Rankings Are Signals, Not Destiny
Global university rankings are imperfect tools. They privilege measurable outputs over teaching quality, civic engagement, and cultural scholarship. Yet they serve as signals of national priorities and capacities.
China’s rise reflects a state that has decided knowledge production is central to power. India’s lag reflects a system still torn between access and excellence, equity and ambition. The gap is not due to lack of talent but lack of sustained, strategic commitment.
If India can align its democratic values with administrative efficiency, its social diversity with academic rigour, and its youthful population with world-class research ecosystems, it need not fear comparison with China—or anyone else.
Ultimately, the true purpose of universities is not rankings but knowledge that advances society. On that front, India’s story is still unfinished—and its potential far from exhausted.
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