This study reviews the developments of 9 Chinese top universities supported by "985 Project" during 1997-2005 based on the analysis of a series of scientometric indicators, including the total number of publications indexed by Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, the cumulated impact factor of publications, the number of publications divided by the number of faculty members, the average impact factor of publications, percentage of publications in top 20 percent journals, the percentage of internationally collaborative publications, the number of publications in six broad subject fields and the Index of Disciplinary Balancing. The findings are helpful to the understanding of the achievements of Chinese top universities during this period as well as the remaining gaps between them and world-class universities.