China is an important player in global university ranking exercise. Nevertheless, existing studies have not adequately explored how the legitimacy of adopting university ranking outcomes has been chronologically established on Chinese soil. This paper attempts to fill this knowledge gap drawing on interviews with 37 stakeholders between 2003-2021 and an analysis of 2086 articles and reports published between 1984-2022 concerning university rankings. It first analyses the process of institutionalization of adopting university ranking outcomes in China, and discusses how the policy initiatives such as the '985 Project' in 1998 and the 'Double First-Class' Project in 2016 intertwined with university rankings over the time and provide opportunities for establishing such legitimacy. Secondly, it analyses the mechanisms through which university ranking outcomes gain legitimacy, and suggests that interactions among the stakeholders are one of the key mechanisms, whereby the central government plays a pivotal role in legitimizing adoption of international university ranking results. Furthermore, we argue that the universities have responded actively to adopting the ranking outcomes and use them as strategic tools to achieve their own goals. As such, this paper sheds a new light on the impact of university rankings in China and beyond.