C9 League

For the eSports team, see Cloud9 League of Legends.

The C9 League is an inter-university seminar composed of nine public universities in China. It was established on May 4, 1998, at the 100th anniversary of Peking University. These elite universities are associated with academic excellence, highly selective admissions, and social elitism. The C9 League is colloquially known as the Chinese Ivy League according to some press and media outlets.^[1][2][3]

C9 League

九校联盟
Formation	4 May 1998; 27 years ago (1998-05-04)
Founded at	Beijing, China
Region	China
Membership	9 universities
Chinese name
Simplified Chinese	九校联盟
Traditional Chinese	九校聯盟
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Jiǔxiào Liánméng

Membership

The C9 league comprises nine public universities:^[4]

• Fudan University – Shanghai
• Shanghai Jiao Tong University – Shanghai
• Harbin Institute of Technology – Harbin, Heilongjiang
• Nanjing University – Nanjing, Jiangsu
• Peking University – Beijing
• Tsinghua University – Beijing
• University of Science and Technology of China – Hefei, Anhui
• Xi'an Jiaotong University – Xi'an, Shaanxi
• Zhejiang University – Hangzhou, Zhejiang

All C9 League schools are part of Project 985, Project 211, Plan 111, and Double First-Class Construction.^[5][6] In 2014, the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences started to participate in the C9 League meetings.^[7]

Rankings

The following are the rankings of the C9 schools in the four major world university rankings that are recognized by governments in multiple countries and regions.^{[8][9][10][11][12][13][14]}

University	City	QS (2026)[15]	THE (2025)[16]	ARWU (2024)[17]	USNWR (2025)[18]	Average
Members
Tsinghua University	Beijing	17	12	22	11	15
Peking University	Beijing	14	13	24	25	19
Zhejiang University	Hangzhou	49	47	27	45	42
Shanghai Jiao Tong University	Shanghai	=47	52	38	46	46
Fudan University	Shanghai	30	36	50	70	46
University of Science and Technology of China	Hefei	=132	53	42	71	74
Nanjing University	Nanjing	=103	65	82	86	84
Harbin Institute of Technology	Harbin	256	152	101-150	128	165
Xi'an Jiaotong University	Xi'an	305	201-250	95	141	192
Participant[7]
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences	Beijing	=362	N/A	N/A	54	208

See also

• List of universities in China
• Double First-Class Construction, a scheme for improving 147 of China's top universities
• Excellence League, an alliance of leading Chinese universities with strong backgrounds in engineering
• Project 985, a former project for developing 39 leading research universities in China
• Project 211, a former program for developing 115 comprehensive universities in China
• National Key Universities (China)
• Seven Sons of National Defence