US universities dominated the top 20 in an annual ranking of global educational institutions released by a Chinese organisation Friday, with Harvard remaining in first place ahead of Stanford.

The top 20 in the 2014 Academic Ranking of World Universities included only four non-American institutions, all from Europe, including Cambridge in fifth place and Oxford in joint ninth.

The top 10 were virtually unchanged on last year, with MIT in third, swapping position with fourth-placed University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton in sixth doing the same with Caltech in seventh.

Columbia University in New York came eighth, and the University of Chicago was joint ninth.

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich came 19th, remaining the highest-ranked continental European institution.

University College London climbed two places to scrape into the top 20.

The Centre for World Class Universities at Shanghai's Jiaotong University surveys more than 1,200 universities around the world annually.

It ranks the best 500 based on six indicators, including the number of Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals won by staff and alumni, and the number of articles published in the journals Nature and Science.

The factors -- which unlike many other listings do not include teaching quality or graduate employment -- are such that the findings will vary only slowly over time.

European officials have criticised the calculation basis for being biased towards sciences at the expense of the humanities.

"It's a ranking like any other, on top of that the Shanghai ranking's criteria are more friendly towards Anglo-Saxon countries than European universities," France's higher education and research minister Genevieve Fioraso told AFP.

"American research universities are very selective, unlike ours," she added.

France had four institutions in the top 100, led by the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, which was 35th.

The Jiaotong body started compiling the annual rankings -- originally intended to benchmark the performance of Chinese universities -- in 2003 and Harvard has been in first place ever since, it said in a release.

The top-ranked Asia-Pacific institutions were Tokyo University in 21st place and Kyoto in 26th, both of them unchanged on last year.

Peking University was the highest-ranked in mainland China at 119, followed by Shanghai Jiaotong itself at 122.

The compilers describe their list as the "most trustworthy" in global university rankings, citing transparent methodology and reliable data.

Hong Kong cuts 2014 forecast as Q2 growth slows to 1.8%
Hong Kong (AFP) Aug 15, 2014 - Hong Kong Friday cut its economic growth forecast for 2014 after an unexpected slowdown in second quarter expansion blamed on a fall-off in tourist spending and a slowdown in domestic demand.

Gross domestic product grew 1.8 percent in the three months ending June 30 compared to the same period last year, the lowest since 2012, a government statement said.

The result falls short of a forecast by five economists polled by the Wall Street Journal, which expected a 2.0 percent year-on-year increase.

The figure was also lower than the previous quarter's year-on-year 2.6 percent growth, as the government lowered its growth forecast for the year to two to three percent from three to four percent.

"The distinct slackening in tourist spending of late and the slowdown in domestic demand have emerged as new sources of uncertainty affecting the overall economic outlook," the statement said.

Exports of goods were up 2.3 percent year-on-year for the second quarter, helped by a pick-up in June. The figure is up from the previous quarter's year-on-year growth of 0.5 percent.

Exports to the European Union and the US continued to grow at a moderate pace, while exports to other Asian markets improved due to a better global economic environment.

Exports of services saw a 2.3 percent year-on-year decline for the second quarter, the first decrease since 2009, dragged by a slowdown in exports of travel services.

Private consumption grew by 1.2 percent year-on-year for the reported period, lower than the preceding quarter's year-on-year expansion of 2.0 percent.

"Domestic demand is likely to maintain only a rather slow pace of expansion in the second half of the year. Local consumer sentiment may turn somewhat cautious following the economic growth slowdown in recent quarters," the statement said.

The potential for growth may be held back by the "rather fragile" advanced economies of the US and the EU, the statement added.

Risks including the changing of the pace of US monetary normalisation and constrained recovery of the eurozone economy were a concern, the statement said.

"Looking forward, the global economy is expected to remain on a moderate recovery path in the rest of 2014. This, together with an improving mainland economy, should entail a somewhat brighter export outlook for Hong Kong in the period ahead."