Project 211

Project 211, initiated in 1995 from the Ministry of Education, provides funding for about 100 Chinese universities with the intent of raising them to international academic standards by the End of the 21st century. Today the universities belonging to the Project 211 are all high ranking universities which are outfitted with top equipment.

Project 985

In May 1998 the Chinese Government introduced a second project, the Project 985, which aims to make elite universities out of 39 universities belonging to the 211 Project. The main interest behind it is to promote international cooperation in order to host more foreign students as well as to send more Chinese students and especially doctoral candidates abroad.

The C9 League

When in 1998 the Project 985 was established, nine prestigious universities were chosen for an initial 3-years funding period. In 2009 the C9-League was formed out of these nine universities. The universities of the C9-League are as follows:

University	Province or Municipality
Fudan University	Shanghai
Harbin Institute of Technology	Heilongjiang
Nanjing University	Jiangsu
Peking University	Beijing
Shanghai Jiao Tong University	Shanghai
Tsinghua University	Beijing
University of Science and Technology of China	Anhui
Xi'an Jiao Tong University	Shaanxi
Zhejiang University	Zhejiang