Studying in China: Tuition, Living Costs, Year Totals and Scholarships (2026)

Scope

16 mainland universities in the ARWU 2026 top 100 plus 3 in Hong Kong (HKU and CityUHK are in the top 100, CUHK is kept as a reference).

Codebook

data.csv, 132 rows. Unique key: cost_id.

Table 1. Columns of data.csv.

tuition.csv, 32 rows. Unique key: university_id + track + campus.

Table 2. Columns of tuition.csv.

year_total.csv, 32 rows. Unique key: university_id + track + campus.

Table 3. Columns of year_total.csv.

scholarships.csv, 35 rows. Unique key: scholarship_id.

Table 4. Columns of scholarships.csv.

csc_quotas.csv, 22 rows. Unique key: country + programme + cycle.

Table 5. Columns of csc_quotas.csv.

sources.csv, 163 rows. Unique key: source_id. One row per distinct URL in the columns whose name ends in source_url: source_id, url, title (publisher and host), source_type, accessed_at (latest date a row citing it was checked), used_for (file, column and number of rows).

Method

Data for 13 mainland and 3 Hong Kong universities were collected between 9 and 23 October 2026 from official pages of the universities (admission and international-office pages, fee tables, catalogues), governments, embassies and visa centres, ranking publishers and, for stable facts only, secondary sources; a second verification pass on 23 October 2026 re-read the rows with gaps. An independent re-check of 69 random rows against the source found 64 matching; the 5 differences were corrected or given a lower confidence before release. The three universities that entered the ARWU top 100 in 2026 (Southeast University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Tianjin University) were collected on 8 November 2026 into the same columns; an independent re-check of 20 random rows of that collection found no difference: 8 matching, 6 matching on a secondary or previous-cycle page (marked partial), 6 whose page could not be opened automatically. A second check of 20 other random rows of the three universities, read in a browser on the same day, found 15 matching, 1 matching in part, 1 whose page is no longer online and 3 differences (Southeast University's 2027 admission brochure had replaced the 2025 language and calendar rules; Tianjin University names A-Level results in its scholarship notice); the 3 were corrected before release.

Every row carries its provenance: source_url (the page where the fact is stated; several pages "; "-separated), source_type (official, law, secondary), checked_at (date read), confidence (verified, partial, estimate) and note. status is found or not_found: a not_found row records what was checked and not found, with the URL tried in source_url and the reason in note; its value columns are empty. Empty means unknown; no value is guessed.

Money is kept as published, in local currency with its ISO 4217 code and period. USD columns are computed with one rate for the whole snapshot: 6.6786 CNY and 7.8476 HKD per USD on 2026-10-21 (fx_rate, fx_date), rounded to whole dollars. Academic cycles are stated per row (e.g. "2026 intake", "2027/28").

Text added by the second verification pass starts with "Updated 2026-10-23:". Ids follow the other Long Bet datasets (university_id slugs).

data.csv lists each published cost item as the source gives it (one figure in amount_local, or a range in amount_min_local / amount_max_local). year_total.csv adds up, per university and track, tuition, a dormitory place for one person, medical insurance, the residence permit (mainland) and living costs for one academic year of 10 months (300 days); one-off fees (application, deposit, medical check) are left out. Harbin Institute of Technology has a second English-taught row for its Shenzhen campus (campus = shenzhen), which admits separately and has its own fees. Living costs use the university's own official estimate where it publishes one, canteen prices where it does not, and otherwise the envelope of the other universities' official estimates (living_basis); components_missing says what was assumed, and the total is a floor when it is not empty. All year totals are estimate. csc_quotas.csv records the Chinese Government Scholarship and Hong Kong Belt and Road places published by the sending country or the Hong Kong government, by cycle.

Known limitations

• Only 8 of 19 universities publish an official estimate of living costs; the others are filled from canteen prices or from the range of the other universities (living_basis).
• Transport and phone costs were collected for a few cities only (rows with item metro_single_fare, transport_monthly_discount, transport_student_scheme, sim_phone) and are not part of the year totals. Medical insurance amounts are not published by Peking University, Central South University, HKU and CUHK.
• Chinese Government Scholarship places for 2026/27 were not found for France, Poland and Hungary; the 2027/28 call for Russia was not yet published on 2026-10-23.
• Tuition tables of several universities carry no year; they are marked by tariff_cycle and confidence = partial.
• Across all files of this package, 21 of 253 rows are not_found and 40 are estimate.

How to verify

Open the source_url of a row and compare with checked_at. Fees, deadlines, visa fees and scholarship terms change every cycle and are the first values to re-check; rankings change once a year. USD columns can be recomputed as local amount / fx_rate. not_found rows show which page was tried, so a later check can start there. Every URL is listed once in sources.csv.

Cite this
Atamanova, M. (2026). Studying in China: Tuition, Living Costs, Year Totals and Scholarships (2026) [Data set]. https://mariascales.com/research/long-bet/data/china-study-costs/

License

CC BY 4.0 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) for this compilation: free to share and adapt with attribution, see Cite this.