Four of the top 10 universities in Asia are, for the first time, from the Chinese mainland, according to the latest rankings from London-based QS Quacquarelli Symonds, which were released on Wednesday.

Tsinghua University ranked fourth in Asia, with Peking University fifth, Zhejiang University sixth and Fudan University seventh.

Mainland universities' QS Asia university rankings have improved steadily. There was only one mainland university in the top 10 when the rankings were first published in 2009, and just two in the top 20.

In the 2020 rankings, the four mainland universities in the top 10 are joined in the top 20 by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which ranked 17th.

The top 10 are: National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, the University of Hong Kong, Tsinghua University, Peking University, Zhejiang University, Fudan University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The only new face in the top 10 this year, Zhejiang University, was ranked 13th last year.

The rankings of the top three universities in Hong Kong have dropped slightly in the past year, with the University of Hong Kong slipping from second to third, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology from seventh to eighth, and Chinese University of Hong Kong from ninth to 10th.

China has more universities in Asia's top 500 than any other country, with 165 — 118 from the Chinese mainland, 37 from Taiwan, eight from Hong Kong and two from Macao. India follows with 101, then Japan with 87 and South Korea 71.

The latest rankings feature 550 universities, including 68 new entrants. They are based on 10 different indicators, including academic and employer reputation.

Ten mainland universities are among the top 50 for academic reputation, an indicator based on a global survey of 94,672 academics.

Six mainland universities make the top 50 in the employer reputation measure, based on a global survey of 44,884 recruiters, with Peking University ranked first and Tsinghua University second.

But it is in the research indicators that Chinese mainland institutions really shine. There are 25 of them among the top 50 in citations per paper, a measure of the influence of research papers.