In 1983, Burton Clark published a study that was to become a classic work on the organisation and government of higher education systems (Clark 1983). He constructed three "ideal types" of system--state system, market system and professional system, and summarised the way that national systems of higher education are dependent on the forms of authority in each of these ideal types in a "triangle of coordination". Clark made these allocations wholly on the basis of qualitative data. This article reports on a study of the higher education system in China that extends Clark's analysis in several ways. First, it introduces a quantitative element to the location of systems within the triangle; second, it adds a new nation to those in Clark's sample (and one that has undergone rapid change in recent years); third, it uses the triangle to analyse components of the system at sub-national level.