China has improved in its PPI score by 6.7 per cent since 2009, broadly in line with other developing countries. China is now ranked 66th on the Positive Peace Report 2022 compared to 94th on the GPI.
To a large extent, the improvement has reflected advances in the economic, health and physical infrastructure, which comprise the Structures domain of Positive Peace.
China posted strong improvements in its Sound Business Environment and the Equitable Distribution of Resources Pillars of Positive Peace, which improved by 14.7 per cent and seven per cent, respectively. All Pillars recorded improvements since 2009, although some – especially Free Flow of Information, Low Levels of Corruption and Sound Business Environment – come off very low bases.
In 2013, the Attitudes domain deteriorated markedly. This coincided with the Chinese Banking Liquidity Crisis, which saw an end to easy credit and had a negative impact on gold and stock markets. At the time, there were noticeable deteriorations recorded in the group grievance, factionalised elites and exclusion by socio-economic group indicators.
Individuals using the Internet, financial institutions and inequality-adjusted life expectancy were the indicators to post the largest improvements since 2009. On the other end of the scale, China has seen a large deterioration in the quality of information disseminated by the government domestically. Press freedoms have also been curtailed.
Relatively small deficits in the quality of information and freedom of press subcategories have been easily offset by large gains in the percentage of people using the internet and strong surges in the financial institution index, which measures the quality of the financial institutions, including the depth of the financial sector and the access to financial products.
Download the Positive Peace Report 2022 here.
