The city of Zhanjiang in Guangdong province was listed among China's top 100 cities with high quality universities, coming in at number 96, according to a report released by the CUAA-Team of China University Evaluation on March 21.

The top 100 ranking for Zhanjiang comes in part due to the city's excellent science and research resources. The city is home to a dozen provincial-level key labs, engineering research centers and prefecture-level working stations for postdoctoral researches.

According to the list, a total of five cities from Guangdong province made the list, with Guangzhou ranking seventh, Shenzhen 29th, Shantou 41st and Dongguan 89th.

Zhanjiang will continue to improve the quality of local universities to boost regional economic development during the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020), hoping to become a high education base and innovation center in the Beibu Gulf Rim, according to the city government.

Founded in 1989, the CUAA-Team of China University Evaluation is a Shenzhen-based special research institute, dedicated to university evaluation and startups research in China. It has carried out the longest continuous evaluation of Chinese universities.

The Zhanjiang Normal College is renamed the Lingnan Normal University on June 28, 2014. The city is also home to Guangdong Ocean University and Guangdong Medical University. [Photo/yinsha.com]