DAMIcn/china-universities

China Universities Dataset 🎓

582 Chinese universities — names (English + 中文), city, province, category, 985/211/双一流 tags, official websites, logos, and ShanghaiRanking (软科中国大学排名) 2026 national ranks and scores, plus the 2021 edition for comparison. Shipped as ready-to-use JSON · CSV · SQL, no scraping needed.

One import and you have a structured Chinese university database: searchable slugs, province→city geography, prestige tags, official sites, and two dated ranking editions.

Why this exists

Every project touching Chinese higher-ed data ends up re-scraping the same ranking sites. I built this for a student-review platform and figured I'd save everyone the trouble — clean, merged, deduped, documented. If it helps you, a ⭐ means a lot.

Files

File	Format	Use it for
data/universities.json	JSON	JS/TS apps, APIs, static sites
data/universities.csv	CSV	Excel, pandas, quick analysis
data/universities.sql	PostgreSQL	Direct import (psql -f) — includes CREATE TABLE
logos/<id>.png	PNG	University crests with transparent backgrounds (604 files, ~15 MB)
scripts/scrape.mjs	Node 18+	Regenerate the raw ranking data any year

Data dictionary

Field	Type	Notes
slug	string	Canonical URL-friendly ID (tsinghua-university, ustc)
slug_aliases	string[]	Alternate slugs (tsinghua, qinghua, thu, …)
name / name_zh	string	English / 中文 names — 2026-current (13 recent renames applied)
city / province / country	string	English names; city→province hierarchy
category	string	comprehensive, stem, normal, agriculture, forestry (软科主榜 categories)
website	string	Official university site — all 582 rows
logo_url	string	Official crest on ShanghaiRanking's CDN (provenance URL). The numeric id in the path maps to logos/<id>.png — a cleaned transparent-background PNG shipped with the dataset
shanghairanking.national_rank	int	软科主榜 2026 national rank (1–573)
shanghairanking.score	float	2026 total score (published for ~top 500; null for 500+ tier)
shanghairanking.national_rank_2021	int	软科主榜 2021 national rank — all 582 rows
shanghairanking.score_2021	float	2021 total score — all 582 rows
shanghairanking.url	string	Deep link to the school's institution page
shanghairanking.tags	string[]	985, 211, 双一流 (Double First-Class) where applicable
shanghairanking.indicators	object	10-dimension sub-scores (办学层次/学科水平/师资/科研/国际竞争力…) — top ~100 schools only, keyed by indicator code

Quickstart

JavaScript / TypeScript

import unis from './data/universities.json' with { type: 'json' }
const top10 = unis.filter(u => u.shanghairanking.national_rank <= 10)
const elite985 = unis.filter(u => u.shanghairanking.tags.includes('985'))

Python / pandas

import pandas as pd
df = pd.read_csv('data/universities.csv')
df[df.province == 'Jiangsu'].sort_values('national_rank').head(10)

PostgreSQL

psql -d yourdb -f data/universities.sql

Sample row

{
  "slug": "tsinghua-university",
  "name": "Tsinghua University",
  "name_zh": "清华大学",
  "city": "Beijing", "province": "Beijing", "country": "China",
  "category": "comprehensive",
  "website": "https://www.tsinghua.edu.cn/",
  "slug_aliases": ["qinghua", "thu", "tsinghua"],
  "shanghairanking": {
    "year": 2026, "national_rank": 1, "score": 1087.1,
    "national_rank_2021": 1, "score_2021": 969.2,
    "url": "https://www.shanghairanking.cn/institution/tsinghua-university",
    "tags": ["双一流", "985", "211"]
  }
}

Coverage & honesty notes

• 573 / 582 unis carry a 软科 2026 national rank — the rest are schools not on the 主榜 (they rank in 软科's specialist lists for medicine, finance, arts, etc., which this dataset doesn't cover yet).
• national_rank_2021 / score_2021 hold the 2021 edition — every row has both, so you can chart rank/score movement across 5 years. Note the score scale changed between editions, so compare ranks, not raw scores.
• score is published only for the top ~500; lower-tier schools get national_rank ranges like 500+ (stored as null score).
• website URLs come from official domains carried by the underlying 2021-vintage source — a few schools may have changed domains since; PRs welcome.
• Earlier exports carried uni_type / languages_of_instruction columns with ~12 rows populated; they were dropped in v3 — too sparse to be useful.
• city is province-level coarse for a handful of rows (e.g. a few entries list city: "Anhui"). PRs fixing cities are very welcome.
• School names are the 2026 edition — some were renamed/upgraded in recent years (嘉兴学院→嘉兴大学, 常熟理工学院→苏州工学院…), which is a feature: this is fresher than most datasets floating around.

Regenerating

The ranking data comes from ShanghaiRanking's own published list — no credentials needed:

node scripts/scrape.mjs        # writes data/shanghairanking-2026.json (all 590 raw records)
node scripts/scrape.mjs 2025   # any edition year

The raw payload also carries per-school indicator sub-scores (indData, 10 dimensions) for the top ~100 schools — they're in the JSON if you want to go deeper.

Data, attribution & disclaimer

• Rankings, names, and scores are factual data published publicly by ShanghaiRanking (上海软科) — all credit belongs to them. institution_url links back to their site per school. logo_url keeps the CDN URL as provenance; logos/ ships the same crests processed to transparent-background PNGs (baked-in white margins removed with a border flood-fill, seal interiors preserved).
• This repo is not affiliated with or endorsed by ShanghaiRanking or any listed university. University names/logos belong to their respective owners.
• I'm a student putting this together as a good-faith contribution so the community doesn't have to re-scrape the same pages — shared for research, education, and building useful things. If you're a rights holder and want anything changed or removed, open an issue and I'll sort it out promptly.
• Provided as-is, no warranty. Verify against the source before publishing anything critical.

Changelog

v4 — 2026-10-25 — logos/ added: 604 official crests as transparent-background PNGs. Sources: logo and logo-jpg endpoints on ShanghaiRanking. All JPEG-derived and RGB PNGs with baked white backgrounds were converted to alpha (border flood-fill + de-fringe); genuine white seal interiors are untouched. Includes crests for 4 universities the CDN previously lacked mappings for (Hexi, Luliang, Gannan/applied-jiangxi, Yangtze River College) and replaces one corrupted source image (赣东学院) plus one opaque maroon-square variant (Pingxiang). Every logo_url with a _uni/logo/<id> or _uni/logo-jpg/<id> path now resolves to a local logos/<id>.png.

v3 — Dropped near-empty uni_type / languages_of_instruction columns (~12 populated rows, too sparse). CSV now 16 columns.

v2 — Added website for all 582 rows and the 2021 ranking edition (national_rank_2021, score_2021) for 5-year comparisons.

License

Scripts: MIT (see LICENSE). The data itself is factual/public-domain-ish by nature — use it freely, and a link back here is appreciated but not required.

Keywords

china universities dataset · chinese university database · 中国大学排名 · 软科 shanghairanking 2026 · university rankings data · china higher education data · 985 211 双一流 list · chinese universities csv json sql