China has reinforced its dominance in the Times Higher Education BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings 2016, claiming half of the top 10 places. Beijing-based Peking and Tsinghua universities have taken the top two spots for the third year in a row, while the University of Science and Technology of China, Zhejiang University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University rank seventh, eighth and 10th, respectively.

Overall, China is the most-represented nation, with 39 institutions in the extended Top 200 list of higher education institutions in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and 30 other “emerging economies”. The other BRICS nations have also performed well this year, albeit to a lesser extent, with 14 Brazilian and 15 Russian institutions, including Lomonosov Moscow State University in third place, featuring in the table.

India is the third most-represented nation in the list, behind China and Taiwan, but is the only BRICS nation without a university in the Top 10. The Indian Institute of Science leads the country’s 16 institutions in 16th place.

Countries outside the BRICS nations have also made progress. The National Autonomous University of Mexico is the highest-ranked Latin American institution outside Brazil, in 23rd place, while the Czech Republic has five institutions in the top 100, up from two last year.

Phil Baty, THE rankings editor, says the table provides an “extraordinary case study in what can be achieved in only a couple of decades, where significant money and political will can be brought to bear”.

In all, 35 countries feature in the Top 200, including 16 for the first time, such as Romania, Greece, Nigeria, Kenya and Qatar. Baty says this partly reflects the decision to expand the list from 100 to 200 universities and to increase the number of countries eligible for inclusion to 48.

The THE BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings use the same 13 performance indicators as the flagship World University Rankings but are recalibrated to reflect the development priorities of universities in emerging economies.