Chinese universities are making a "dramatic" rise up a leading university rankings table as higher education institutions in Britain and the United States face growing competition from Asia.

According to the annual Times Higher Education World University Rankings published Wednesday, two Chinese universities entered the top 15 for the first time in the 20-year history of the ranking.

China's Tsinghua University occupied 12th place on the list, gaining four places since last year, while Peking University rose from 17th to 14th.

Overall, China had seven universities in the top 100, compared to two universities in 2018, while the number of Chinese institutions in the top 400 list doubled from 15 in 2021 to 30 this year.

"The competition from East Asia is accelerating," said Phil Baty, chief global affairs officer at Times Higher Education, which publishes the ranking.

Baty added that China in particular is "making further dramatic rises up the rankings", adding that other East Asian countries, such as South Korea and Singapore, are "also remaining strong".

The top of the ranking remains dominated by the United States with 13 universities making the top 20, with Stanford University in second place and The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in third.

Britain's University of Oxford was ranked the world's number one for an eighth year in a row with two other UK universities also making the top 20, including Cambridge -- fifth behind Harvard in the US.

But despite leading the rankings both Britain and the United States saw a decrease in the number of universities in the top 200 -- by four and three institutions respectively -- since 2021.

This year's ranking -- "our biggest and most rigorous" according to Baty -- includes 1,904 universities from 108 countries and regions.

The assessment criteria cover performance indicators grouped into five areas: teaching, research quality, research environment, international outlook and industry.

Rankings by Times Higher Education are among the leading university rankings, alongside those produced by UK-based Quacquarelli Symonds, the Academic Ranking of World Universities in Shanghai and the US News Best Global Universities Ranking.