SHANGHAI - CHINESE universities are slowly climbing the world rankings though their US peers remain dominant in the list of the top centres of learning, a Chinese ranking showed.

Eighteen Chinese universities made it to the top 100 Asia Pacific list, up from 14 last year, the Shanghai Jiaotong University said in its sixth Academic Ranking of World Universities to be officially released on August 15.

Although Chinese universities have gained in status, they are still absent from the world's top 100 list and far behind top Asian schools such as Japan's Tokyo University, which ranked 19th globally, the list showed.

Harvard University remained at the number one spot on the world rank, followed by Stanford University and the University of California Berkeley.

US universities took eight of the top ten spots, while Britain's Oxford and Cambridge, ranking fourth and tenth respectively, emerged as the only two non-American universities to make it to the top ten.

China's Nanjing University secured the 223rd position, two spots above Beijing's Peking University, which has long been seen as China's top academic institution.

In the greater China region, National Taiwan University tops at 159th position, followed by the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, which took the 204th and 212nd spots.

The ranking was based on several criteria including alumni and staff winning Nobel prizes, highly cited researchers, articles published in Nature and Science magazines, and per capita academic performance. -- AFP