Abstract:Jointly building world-class universities is the support point for Shanghai and Macao to build a talent center and innovation highland. Given that the geographical proximity of the traditional economic era is contrary to the development trend of the current era, but in the era of digital economy, the change of the sharing mode between world-class universities indicates that the cross-regional university clusters will be the future development trend, so this paper proposes that it is necessary and feasible for Shanghai and Macao to jointly build world-class universities. By studying the evaluation indicators of QS World University Rankings, THE World University Rankings, Academic Ranking of World Universities, and U.S. News World University Rankings, it summarizes the criteria for establishing a world-class university, including reputation surveys, faculty team, education and teaching, scientific research, international cooperation, and teacher income, compares the five universities in Shanghai and Macao against world-class universities abroad, finds that there are four main shortcomings, namely the lack of top-notch international research achievements, shortage of top-notch international talents, low degree of internationalization, and lack of Chinese characteristics. Based on this, it proposes some suggestions such as improving the scientific research level of the first-class universities in Shanghai and Macao, accelerating the training of top international talents in Shanghai and Macao universities, improving the internationalization degree of universities in Shanghai and Macao, building a world-class Shanghai and Macao universities with Chinese characteristics and promoting the development of first-class industries in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta.