A total of 12 Chinese academic institutions have been included in the global top 100 of QS World University Rankings 2020, which was released Wednesday by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), a higher education analyst firm.

Globally, Massachusetts Institute of Technology is named the world's leading university for a record-breaking eighth consecutive year in the rankings, while Asia's top universities are the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University (both 11th).

Tsinghua University is China's highest-ranked university in the list, rising from last year's 17th to 16th after sustained improvements in research output. Peking University rose by eight places to 22nd globally.

According to the QS, this year's rankings highlight a sustained improvement throughout the Chinese system. Furthermore, Chinese research impact continues to improve. Among 42 ranked universities in Chinese Mainland, 32 have improved their performance for QS's Citations per Faculty indicator.

Chinese Mainland's top ten universities produced 428,191 research papers in the five-year period used by the QS to assess research impact while the United States' top ten universities produced 443,996. This means that the output gap is now only 15,805 papers, compared to 37,233 last year.

"China has made (a) major breakthrough in its education modernization strategy, with significantly improved education quality and global influence. In the future, China might also consider to proactively integrate Artificial Intelligence technology in all key areas of education development,"said Christina Yan Zhang, China Director of the QS.

The QS has been compiling university rankings since 2004, when they published their inaugural QS World University Rankings. Since then, the rankings have grown to be the world's most popular source of comparative data about university performance.