Netbig's Chinese University Ranking (in mainland China) in 1999 and 2000 had tremendous impacts on all facets of society. Our purpose is to offer a full picture of Chinese University's development to the government, parents, students, as well as the University itself, thus promote the open level and internationalization of Chinese Universities, provide a source of reference to educational authorities for policy making, and contribute our endeavor to educational development in China.

Concerning our capability, available resource and the incomparability of education systems, Netbig Chinese University Ranking should be named, more exactly, as "Ranking for Universities In Mainland China", because Universities in Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan are not included in this ranking. We studied cautiously in order to work out the best we can get at present.

We did the university ranking evaluation as following:

1. June 2000----December 2000: collect suggestions and opinions on evaluation report 2000 from experts and different facets of society.
2. January 2001---April 2001: consult education experts for advice on improvement of evaluating methodology and system in Ranking 2001.
3. April 2001---Present: collect and update data; calculate the result.

Now the result has come out. As we all know, once we change our viewpoint, everything may come out differently. Netbig's Ranking has its own viewpoint, which is the customer's viewpoint; and its own standard, which consists of 6 primary indicators and 20 secondary indicators. Each University's ranking is closely related to this viewpoint and standard. Therefore, this result is a conditional and relative result rather than an absolute one.

As the trailblazer of University Ranking in Mainland China, we have no beaten track to take, which, has been bringing new challenges to us since the very beginning. Problems occurred as we did our work, such as collecting accurate and overall data. However, we took pains to fix them, and we've been discovering better methodology all along.

Most Chinese Universities are financially backed by government funds, which comes from tax and contribution of the whole society. We believe that, since universities are a part of governmental resource, they should be fully utilized to contribute to the society instead of being monopolized by some specific government department. As a nongovernmental organization, though a trifling voice, we would like to advocate a fair and open system to maximize the value of social resource, thus benefit the society. After all, open guarantees and motivates progress.

In course of our work, many experts sent us letters with constructive suggestions, encouragement, and their expectations to the Ranking this year. We understand that, what everyone has been expecting is more of improvement rather than perfection. Though still room to improve, we would still like to present this report to readers, meanwhile keep up the effort and work with a sense of perfectionism. We believe in improvement, and we take an optimistic view in our future. As we get more experienced, the Chinese University Ranking will be more representative and authoritative.

Please note that we bear perfectionism in mind as we worked out this ranking. And we sincerely welcome suggestions from universities, experts, parents, students, educational authorities and all other facets of society, since that's what helps us to improve and reach perfection, thus maximize the social utility.