Times Higher Education (THE) on Wednesday revealed its World Reputation Rankings 2018, in which the Chinese mainland claimed six of the world's 100 most prestigious universities, while China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) and Taiwan region have three and one universities in the rankings respectively.

The Chinese mainland has six institutions in the Top 100 (the same number as last year) and two in the Top 20.

Tsinghua University and Peking University are in 14th and 17th place respectively, with both ranks unchanged from 2017. The other four universities from the Chinese mainland that made it into the top 100 are Zhejiang University, Fudan University, University of Science and Technology of China and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

On China's performance, THE's Editorial Director of Global Rankings Phil Baty said: "It seems that China's relentless march up the global league tables has stalled – at least when it comes to the international prestige of its universities. After making major gains in recent years, both China's top two universities, Peking and Tsinghua, have held steady this year," while other stars from the Chinese mainland have slipped.

The annual list, compiled from a globally representative survey of more than 10,000 senior academics, highlights the Top 100 most powerful global university brands. The table's Top 20 comprises 13 American universities, four from the UK, two from China and one from Japan.

The United States continues to dominate, with Harvard University taking the top spot for the eighth consecutive year, and 43 other US institutions making the Top 100.

Europe claimed 33 spots in total – with the UK, Germany and the Netherlands being the most represented. The Asia-Pacific saw 23 institutions placed across the Top 100, with China and Japan most strongly represented.

Meanwhile, India featured in the table for the first time since 2011, with its flagship institution, the Indian Institute of Science, making the 91-100 banding.

According to THE, its World Reputation Rankings are created using the world's largest invitation-only academic opinion survey – a unique piece of research. The 2018 rankings are based on more than 10,000 surveys carried out between January 2018 and March 2018.

The Academic Reputation Survey, available in 15 languages, uses United Nations data as a guide to ensure that the response coverage is as representative of world scholarship as possible. It is also evenly spread across academic disciplines.