downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 932711.93articles per million people
- Year
- 2023. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.JRN.ARTC.SC)
- History
China
Strongest usable evidence: Adaptability, at 79.6. Raise Anticipation first, at 30.1. Experimentation needs more evidence: confidence is 0.24.
Raise, lowest first
| Dimension | Confidence | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Anticipation | 0.46 | 30.1 |
Measure before managing
| Dimension | Confidence | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Experimentation | 0.24 | 100.0 |
| Shared Purpose | 0.41 | 29.9 |
| Coordination | 0.41 | 67.9 |
These lists are the country's capability agenda, computed from the scores. Read the full agenda. It names comparable evidence from other countries and the 18 gaps in the registry.
Why this country is included: State-directed development at continental scale, the clearest contrast to the rest of the set.
Anticipation30.1Confidence0.46usableHow capable is the country of identifying and preparing for emerging change?
China
Read China beside up to three other countries, down to the indicator behind every row.
- Usable or good evidence
- Thin evidence, hollow point. The dashes open further as confidence falls.
- The point still sits at the score, because confidence never moves it.
- Click any axis to see every country on that dimension.
A score from 0 to 100 is a position inside the frame that all the benchmark countries set: zero is the weakest on a dimension and 100 is the strongest. A score of 10 puts a country near the floor of that frame and does not mean 10 percent of a capability.
| Experimentation | 0.24 | 3 of 9 | 0.75 | +19.5(3) | no data | no estimate | |
| Adaptability | 0.46 | 3 of 6 | 1.00 | no trend | 69.0 | -10.6 | |
| Building | 0.57 | 4 of 6 | 0.90 | -5.1(3) | no data | no estimate | |
| Agency | 0.56 | 4 of 5 | 0.75 | no trend | no data | no estimate | |
| Learning | 0.55 | 3 of 4 | 0.81 | no trend | no data | no estimate | |
| Coordination | 0.41 | 3 of 5 | 0.86 | no trend | no data | no estimate | |
| Trust | 0.50 | 5 of 7 | 0.85 | no trend | no data | no estimate | |
| Anticipation | 0.46 | 2 of 4 | 0.96 | +10.7(2) | 56.0 | +25.9 | |
| Shared Purpose | 0.41 | 3 of 6 | 0.89 | +0.8(2) | 33.0 | +3.1 |
How to read this page
Each dimension has a score from 0 to 100. It shows where this country sits among all 125 countries in the comparison frame, not a percentage. Confidence sits beside the score. A dashed radar edge and hollow point mean the evidence is thin. The records below show each indicator, its raw value, year and source.
A panel estimate, when present, is a separate judgment about what the indicators miss. It does not change the score or confidence. The panel's provenance is shown beside the estimate.
- direct capability measuredirect capability measure Measures the thing itself.
- capability inputcapability input Measures something that supports the capability.
- downstream outcomedownstream outcome Measures a result that usually follows from the capability.
- perception proxyperception proxy Records what people or experts say, not what they did.
Confidence
- very thin0.00 to 0.25
The score rests on one or two indicators. Do not quote it on its own.
- thin0.25 to 0.45
A minority of indicators, or evidence old enough to have moved. Read with care.
- usable0.45 to 0.65
Enough evidence to compare countries, with known holes.
- good0.65 and above
Most indicators observed, recent, from official or intergovernmental sources.
A row marked no dataset exists is a gap: the benchmark wants data that nobody publishes. A retired row has a source this project chose not to use. Both reduce confidence. The glossary defines each term, and the limits page lists where these numbers are known to be wrong about the world.
Anticipation
How capable is the country of identifying and preparing for emerging change?
+10.7 over 10 years, from 19.4 in 2016 to 30.1 on 2 indicators seen in both years.
Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 57.927index 0-100
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IQ.SPI.OVRL)
- History
Government foresight capacity
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: No comparable international dataset. OECD and UN work is descriptive, not scored. Envisioning would have to build this.
Long-horizon research commitments
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no data% of new grants
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked for the share of R&D spending classed as basic research, which is the make-up of a spending stock, the construct D142 retired business R&D share for. OECD MSTI publishes that share for its members only, and UNESCO UIS no longer serves R&D by type of research (construct audit, 2026-10-02). The behaviour behind it is a funder committing to a horizon: a grant awarded for five years or more is a decision to wait for a result. Untried: no memo has triaged a grant register. National funders publish award lists one by one with their own durations, and commercial grant aggregators fail the inspectability rule. Wireable on a grant-level register with award and end dates, on one definition of a competitive public grant, for half the frame or more.
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
R&D expenditureWorld Bank (GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS), 2023
2.6 % of GDP, rank 13 of 118. Gross domestic expenditure on research and development as a share of GDP.
A condition, not scored: money committed to research is what a country spends, and spending it does not show the country reads the future well (D122).
Researchers in R&DWorld Bank (SP.POP.SCIE.RD.P6), 2023
2,107 per million people, rank 40 of 114. Full-time-equivalent researchers per million people.
A condition, not scored: a standing stock of people who could investigate is what a country has, not a record of what they found (D122). Correlates with income but survives size normalization.
Secure internet serversWorld Bank (IT.NET.SECR.P6), 2024
1,413 per million people, rank 64 of 125. Servers using encryption in internet transactions, per million people.
A condition, not scored: a diffusion stock of digital adoption that money buys, not an act of anticipation (D122). Spans four orders of magnitude, so its rank is read on the published value and its correlations on the logged one.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
National basic-research funding allocation
China's National Bureau of Statistics, Ministry of Science and Technology and Ministry of Finance reported 225.91 billion yuan in basic-research expenditure in 2023, equal to 6.77% of national R&D spending.
6.77 % of total R&D expenditure, basic-research share of national r&d expenditure, 2023. National Bureau of Statistics of China, Ministry of Science and Technology and Ministry of Finance, 2023 science-and-technology expenditure communiquรฉ, retrieved 2026-08-31.
How it worked: China's statistical and science ministries separate basic, applied and experimental R&D in a recurring national account, while public funders protect a basic-research tranche alongside mission-oriented programmes. That makes the long-horizon allocation visible in the same frame as industrial development spending.
Limits: The share measures spending classification, not research quality, scientific independence, peer-review quality, frontier breakthroughs or the eventual use of results. The communiquรฉ uses national administrative statistics, reports preliminary GDP inputs and excludes Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, so it is not a complete measure of every Chinese research activity.
Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works
- 56.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
Panelist B's point that bad news travels poorly upward, seen in the property bubble as well as early COVID warnings, is a structural limit on institutional anticipation I had under-weighted, so I move down two points; the NDRC and five-year planning remain durable institutions that anticipated batteries, solar and EVs years ahead.
- 56.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
Near hold. Five-year plans and industrial strategies anticipated EVs, solar and batteries years ahead, which the opaque statistics and per capita articles miss. C's caution about opacity is fair enough to trim two points: Wuhan and the property bubble show bad news travels poorly upward.
- 50.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.35
I rise from 45 to 50. A and B cite long-horizon plans that anticipated EVs, solar and batteries years ahead, which is conversion of resources into direction and not a wealth artefact. The suppression of early COVID warnings and the property bubble show bad news travels poorly upward, and low statistical performance reflects opacity, so I stay below their 58.
Agency
How able are individuals and organizations to turn an intention into action?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 15.59per 1,000 aged 15-64
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.BUS.NDNS.ZS)
- History
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 8.55days
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.REG.DURS.MA.DY)
- History
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 4.55count
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.REG.PROC.MA.NO)
- History
Adults doing digital tasks
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of adults
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- ITU / UNESCO UIS (SDG 4.4.1, ICT skills by type)
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked whether adults can perform standard digital tasks, which reads a skill level, the kind of stock D122 moved out of the scores with internet users. It now counts the act: a person who did the task. It is not the internet users condition beside it, which counts access. Candidate: ITU ICT skills by type (SDG 4.4.1) through the UNESCO UIS API, probed 2026-10-02. Sent a message with an attached file reaches 33 of the 53 countries then in the frame, 25 at 2018 or later, with no United States, India or China and most of Africa and Central America missing; two other task items reach 31 and 16. The items are self-reported and the task list has changed between rounds. Wireable on one task observed for half the frame or more at 2018 or later.
perception proxyobserved
- Raw value
- 7mean 1-10
- Year
- 2022. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Joint EVS/WVS (A173)
- History
- one year
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Individuals using the internetWorld Bank (IT.NET.USER.ZS), 2025
91.6 % of population, rank 32 of 125. Share of the population that used the internet in the last three months.
A condition, not scored: access to the basic tool of modern agency is what people have to act with, not a record of them acting (D122). Saturates near 95%, which compresses the top of the range.
Financial account ownershipWorld Bank (FX.OWN.TOTL.ZS), 2024
89.4 % aged 15+, rank 35 of 122. Adults with an account at a bank or mobile money provider.
A condition, not scored: holding an account is the precondition for almost any economic action, not the action (D122). Global Findex, published every three years.
Credit to the private sectorWorld Bank (FS.AST.PRVT.GD.ZS), 2024
194 % of GDP, rank 2 of 124. Domestic credit provided to the private sector by financial corporations.
A condition, not scored: financial depth is a stock of money available to actors, not what they do with it (D122). High values can also signal a credit bubble, so more is not always better.
Coordination
How effectively can independent actors organize around shared objectives?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
Government effectiveness
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_GE.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. The WGI aggregate the opinions of experts and firms, and in this set the four WGI series correlate with each other between 0.93 and 0.98 while correlating with log GDP per capita at 0.91. That is one perception of national wealth counted in three dimensions. Cross-agency delivery records are the replacement and they are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.
Regulatory quality
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_RQ.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. Same measurement as government effectiveness, filed under a different name, correlating with it above 0.93. See D23 and A4.
Logistics performance
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataindex 1-5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (LP.LPI.OVRL.XQ)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. The LPI is a survey of international freight forwarders, so it records how a country looks to global logistics firms. A small country with a small port scores low whatever its state can organise, which is artefact A9. Container throughput and border time are observable and stay. See D23.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 20.7hours
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (TRD.ACRS.BRDR.EXPT.BRDR.COMP.HR.DB1619)
- History
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 98.073percentage points from approved budget
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (GF.XPD.BUDG.ZS)
- History
University-industry collaboration
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Global Innovation Index
- History
- no data
Note: GII carries it, but the underlying item is a WEF executive opinion survey whose microdata is not inspectable. Excluded on principle 4.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 0.219index 0-1
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- V-Dem (v2x_cspart)
- History
- one year
Public-private collaboration
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: No comparable dataset. PPP investment databases measure infrastructure finance, not collaboration capacity.
Behavioral check, not scored
Each number below is published beside the score and stays out of it. It is not in the frame, the average, the indicator count or the confidence.
Customs clearance time for exportsWorld Bank (IC.CUS.DURS.EX), 2024
3.149 days, lower is better. Average number of days to clear direct exports through customs, as reported by manufacturing firms that export directly, in the World Bank Enterprise Surveys.
Days a manufacturer that exports directly says its goods took to clear customs, from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys. It is the time the border took on firms' own shipments, current where the Doing Business border time this capability scores is frozen at 2019. It is not scored for two reasons. The number of firms behind each country's figure is published only in the survey microdata, and on a proxy from the published tables 37 of the 53 countries in the frame when it was checked clear 30 exporting firms; Mexico, the Philippines, Israel and nine others may not. And the question changed: surveys fielded from 2024 also ask how long release took across all border agencies, and drop an answer where customs alone took longer, so a country surveyed on both sides of the change can move severalfold with nothing at its border changing. India reads 17.3 days in 2022 and 2.5 in 2025, on more than 9,000 firms each time. No country in the frame has two surveys on the new questionnaire yet. Income is not why it is left out: it barely tracks log GDP per capita.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
National PPP programme and project library, and its dismantling
China's Ministry of Finance ran a national government and social capital cooperation (PPP) programme under the 2015 State Council guidance, whose management library held 10,332 projects with 16.6 trillion yuan of investment by the end of October 2022; in November 2023 the State Council ended the 2015 regime for every project not yet procured and replaced it with a concession-only, user-fee mechanism that bars availability payments.
10,332 projects, projects in the national ppp management library, cumulative, 2022-10. 1,695 projects, projects removed from the library in the 2017-2018 clean-up, 2018-04-23. Ministry of Finance of the People's Republic of China (mof.gov.cn, republishing China Finance and Economics News), retrieved 2026-10-01.
How it worked: The Ministry of Finance built a national PPP framework, a central project library and disclosure platform from 2014-2015 and pushed local governments to procure infrastructure through it; when the library became a channel for hidden local debt, the Ministry purged it in 2017-2018 and the State Council replaced the regime in 2023 with user-fee concessions run by the planning commission.
Limits: Both project figures sit in articles by Ministry of Finance affiliated newspapers (China Finance and Economics News, Economic Daily) republished on mof.gov.cn, not in a Ministry statistical release; the Ministry's own monthly library reports on jrs.mof.gov.cn stop at January 2020, so the 2022 figure cannot be checked against a primary table. The source is a ministry press page rather than a statistics release. A count of library projects measures entries in an administrative register, not collaboration: many entries were government-paid availability-payment schemes that the Ministry itself purged in 2017-2018 as disguised local borrowing, so a large share of the 'partnership' was public debt with a private contractor in front. The library count is cumulative and does not show how many projects reached operation or delivered value for money. Dismantling applies to the 2015 regime for new projects; existing contracts keep running and PPP continues as user-fee concessions under the National Development and Reform Commission, so this is the end of one national model, not of public-private delivery in China. The 2023 notice gives the reasons in general terms (hidden local-government debt, private investment) and no figure for what failed.
Trust
How much cooperation is possible beyond immediate personal networks?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
Rule of law
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_RL.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. A WGI perception composite correlating with control of corruption above 0.95 and with log GDP per capita at 0.83. Court throughput and case clearance rates are the observable replacement and are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.
Control of corruption
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataz-score -2.5 to 2.5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (GOV_WGI_CC.EST)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. A WGI perception composite. It measures reputation for corruption, which is not the same thing as corruption, and it tracks income closely. Prosecution and audit records are the observable replacement and are a declared gap. See D23 and A4.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 496.25days
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (ENF.CONT.DURS.DY)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 0.143% of firms
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.FRM.BRIB.ZS)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 0.233scale 0-4 (never to always)
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- V-Dem (v2jucomp_osp)
- History
- one year
Intentional homicide rate
downstream outcomeretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataper 100,000 people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (VC.IHR.PSRC.P5)
- History
- no data
Note: Added 2026-08-26 by D23 as the observable replacement for two retired WGI perception composites, and retired 2026-08-27 by D44 when the diagnostic built in D42 measured what it was doing. It raised this dimension's correlation with log GDP per capita by 0.288, from 0.096 to 0.385, the largest single wealth contribution anywhere in the model. It was added to fix wealth contamination and it was the wealth contamination. The dataset is sound and the objection is to what it measures here: homicide is driven heavily by organised crime, a society can be physically safe while trusting very little, and across this country set the variation it carries is mostly income. Behavioural trust measures remain a gap.
perception proxyobserved
- Raw value
- 63.5% agreeing
- Year
- 2022. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Joint EVS/WVS (A165)
- History
- one year
Trust in public institutions
perception proxyno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% expressing confidence
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD Trust Survey / WVS
- History
- no data
Note: The OECD survey covers members only. Mixing it with WVS items for India and South Africa would break comparability. The Joint EVS/WVS confidence battery (E069) reaches 37 countries from one release, and confidence in the courts (E069_17) is published beside Trust as a check under this id rather than scored: every item of the battery tested (courts, civil service, police, parliament and government) reads higher in the closed and electoral autocracies of the frame than in its democracies, which is deference as much as confidence (A13). The gap stays open for a measure that does not reward a court that cannot rule against the state. See D132.
perception proxyobserved
- Raw value
- 13.4% expressing trust
- Year
- 2022. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Joint EVS/WVS (G007_34_B)
- History
- one year
Court case clearance rate
downstream outcomeno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of incoming cases
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- CEPEJ / OECD / national court statistics
- History
- no data
Note: Whether a court finishes what it starts, counted from case records rather than asked in a survey. D23 named it as the observable replacement for the two retired WGI composites and it has stayed unfilled since. CEPEJ publishes it for Council of Europe members and OECD for its own members, so no single publisher reaches this country set, and a harmonised series needs the project second source adapter. See D57.
Behavioral check, not scored
Each number below is published beside the score and stays out of it. It is not in the frame, the average, the indicator count or the confidence.
Confidence in the courtsJoint EVS/WVS (E069_17), 2022
28.5 % a great deal, higher is better. Share of survey respondents saying they have a great deal of confidence in the justice system and courts, of the four answers a great deal, quite a lot, not very much and none at all, in the Joint EVS/WVS 2017 to 2022 survey round.
Confidence in the courts is the public half of what this capability asks: whether people expect the rules to be enforced when a stranger breaks them. It is not scored because the survey answer reads two things the number cannot tell apart. Where courts are independent, confidence is a judgment of how they perform. Where they answer to the state, it is also deference, and saying otherwise to an interviewer has a cost. In this frame the pattern runs the wrong way. India, the Philippines and Indonesia, all electoral autocracies in the V-Dem 2025 classification, lead on the share saying a great deal, and Vietnam and China, the two closed autocracies surveyed, lead once quite a lot is counted too. The ten electoral autocracies average 21.8 percent saying a great deal and the two closed autocracies 28.1, against 13.6 for liberal and 8.4 for electoral democracies. Scored, it would rank highest the states whose courts are least able to rule against them. Income is not why it is left out: the share correlates about -0.18 with log GDP per capita. The value is the share saying a great deal; the share saying quite a lot is in the source note.
Learning
How effectively does the country acquire, distribute, and update knowledge?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 0.653index 0-1
- Year
- 2020. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (HD.HCI.OVRL)
- History
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 79.119% of firms
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.FRM.TRNG.ZS)
- History
Adult learning participation
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no data% of adults
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Eurostat / OECD PIAAC
- History
- no data
Note: The best available measure of continuous learning capacity, and it exists only for European and OECD members.
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 1.45ratio to world average
- Year
- 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- OpenAlex (citation_normalized_percentile.is_in_top_10_percent)
- History
- one year
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Tertiary enrolmentWorld Bank (SE.TER.ENRR), 2024
76.9 % gross, rank 31 of 124. Gross enrolment ratio in tertiary education.
A condition, not scored: enrolment counts people in formal education and records nothing learned (D122).
Public education expenditureWorld Bank (SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS), 2023
3.9 % of GDP, rank 70 of 125. Government expenditure on education as a share of GDP.
A condition, not scored: public spending on education is a pure input, and learning is what the dimension asks about (D122).
Vocational share of secondaryWorld Bank (SE.SEC.ENRL.VO.ZS), 2019
18.1 % of secondary, rank 42 of 125. Vocational pupils as a share of total secondary enrolment.
A condition, not scored: the share of secondary pupils on a vocational track describes how a school system is built, not what anyone learns in it, and higher is not unambiguously better (D141). It marks a route into skilled work that does not run through university. Learning reads research citation impact, firm training and the human capital index instead.
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Vocational skills upgrading action, 2019-2021
Under a State Council plan funded with 100 billion yuan from the unemployment insurance fund surplus, China's human resources ministry organised 32.184 million person-times of subsidised vocational skills training in 2021 alone, the final year of a three-year action that targeted more than 50 million.
32,184,000 person-times, subsidised vocational skills training delivered in the year, 2021. 92,000,000 person-times (more than), subsidised vocational skills training since the start of the 14th five-year plan, cumulative, 2025-09. Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, 2021 statistical bulletin on human resources and social security development, retrieved 2026-10-01.
How it worked: The State Council set a three-year national training target and released 100 billion yuan from the unemployment insurance fund surplus into ring-fenced provincial accounts, and the human resources ministry paid accredited providers and employers per trainee against a published target catalogue.
Limits: Person-times are enrolments, not people: one worker trained twice counts twice, so the figure cannot be turned into the share of adults trained that the construct asks for. Even if every person-time were a different adult, 32 million is a small single-digit share of China's working-age population. The count is administrative and self-reported up through provincial human resources bureaux whose budgets depended on hitting the plan target; the bulletin publishes no completion, certification or employment outcome. The 2021 figure coincided with pandemic-era job retention schemes and sits beside 15 million 'training in place of work' subsidies, a wage support instrument. The second metric comes from a gov.cn news article, not a bulletin, and implies by subtraction that annual volume after 2021 fell to roughly half the 2021 level once the special fund ended: more than 92 million person-times from 2021 to September 2025, less 32.184 million in 2021, leaves about 60 million over about 3.7 years, against 32 million in 2021 alone. That drop is computed by subtraction, not published, and it is why the record is marked eroded. The 2023 and 2024 bulletins are on mohrss.gov.cn, which serves a script bot check, and were not read.
Experimentation
How easily can new approaches be attempted, tested, abandoned, and improved?
+19.5 over 10 years, from 80.5 in 2016 to 100.0 on 3 indicators seen in both years.
+58.3 over 20 years, from 41.7 in 2006 to 100.0 on 3 indicators seen in both years.
+93.4 over 30 years, from 6.6 in 1996 to 100.0 on 2 indicators seen in both years.
Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 1426644per million people
- Year
- 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.PAT.RESD)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 9192753per million people
- Year
- 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.TMK.RSCT)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 785857per million people
- Year
- 2021. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IP.IDS.RSCT)
- History
New public software repositories
downstream outcomemissing- Raw value
- no dataper million people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- GitHub Innovation Graph (data/repositories.csv)
- History
- no data
Note: A public repository is a software project someone started. It costs nothing, needs no fee or lawyer, and the platform keeps it whether or not it is abandoned, so new repositories per head are the closest open count of many cheap attempts. The value is the change in GitHub's count of public repositories located in the country from the first quarter of one year to the first quarter of the next (2025 to 2026), net of deletions and relocations, read from the GitHub Innovation Graph at a pinned commit. Only public work on one platform is visible: GitLab, Bitbucket, Gitee and private repositories are not. Location is the most common IP location of a repository's members, so VPN users are misplaced and Singapore reads high partly as a regional hub. Coursework and tutorials create repositories too. A country whose count grows by less than a quarter of the median growth is held by an access gate and never scored at zero: in the 2026 file that is China, where the count fell, and Cuba. The publisher is a platform reporting on itself, and no source tier fits it. CC0. See D145.
Venture deals
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no dataper million people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD / national VC associations
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The id keeps its first name so evidence records, links and published files still resolve. The row asked for venture capital deployed as a share of GDP, a level of financial depth of the kind private credit is (D122). A count of first rounds counts attempts started with outside risk money, which is what this capability asks about, and a large round counts once. Candidates, none wireable: the OECD SME and Entrepreneurship Financing scoreboard carried venture capital for 6 of the 16 countries the frame held on 2026-08-26, as amounts in national currency, latest year 2022, with Brazil, India, South Africa and Singapore absent (D21); national venture capital associations publish counts on their own definitions; commercial deal databases cover the world and are not inspectable (D10). Wireable on an inspectable deal count with one definition of a first round for half the frame or more. Read A1 before treating this dimension as measured.
Early-stage entrepreneurial activity
direct capability measuremissing- Raw value
- no data% aged 18-64
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (APS key indicators, TEA rate)
- History
- no data
Note: From the GEM Adult Population Survey, entered by hand because GEM has no open API. TEA counts every new business, so necessity self-employment scores the same as a funded startup, which is why Chile and Argentina sit above the United States here. Read it as how many people are trying, not as how much value the attempts create. GEM does not run every economy every year: Singapore last took part in 2014 and the recency term marks that value down hard.
Tolerance of entrepreneurial failure
perception proxymissing- Raw value
- no data% not deterred
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (APS key indicators, fear of failure rate)
- History
- no data
Note: Stored as 100 minus the published GEM fear of failure rate, so the direction matches the rest of the registry. GEM measures that rate among adults who already see good opportunities, not among all adults, so the denominator differs from the label. Attitudinal: bankruptcy law and time to discharge would be the observable substitute and are still worth wiring beside it.
Firms through regulatory sandboxes
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no datafirms per million people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- national regulators
- History
- no data
Note: Redefined 2026-10-02 (D152). The row asked for the number and breadth of live sandboxes, which is a policy stock: a regime can exist with nobody in it. It now counts what passes through: firms a regulator let test under relaxed rules, and firms that came out, authorised, withdrawn or failed. Regulators publish cohort lists and exit reports one by one. The evidence corpus holds 22 records against this row, most of them counts of firms admitted or exited, each on the definition and window of its own regulator, and no register assembles them on one definition (O1 triage sweep, 2026-10-01). A realistic candidate for Envisioning to build from those lists. Wireable on a register that counts admissions and completions on one definition for half the frame or more.
University spinouts
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no dataper million people
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- national TTO associations
- History
- no data
Note: Reported nationally with incompatible definitions of what counts as a spinout.
Business share of R&D
capability inputretired, see notes- Raw value
- no data% of R&D
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD MSTI / RICYT
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-10-02. The only working source, OECD MSTI joined with RICYT for Latin America, covers 34 of the 53 countries then in the frame, but the row reads the make-up of a spending stock: who performs the R&D a country pays for. R&D spending itself is a condition since D122, and the share is high both where business research is large (Israel) and where total research is tiny and one firm dominates it (Thailand). State enterprises count as business, so China and Vietnam read their ownership model. UIS stopped publishing the series in 2023. Firms trying new things are read through patents, trademarks, designs and entrepreneurship instead. See D142.
Adaptability
How effectively can the system respond when circumstances change?
No trend is shown because too few indicators have values at both ends. The rows below still show the available history.
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 4.615% of labour force
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS)
- History
Long-term unemployment share
downstream outcomemissing- Raw value
- no data% of unemployed
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- ILOSTAT (DF_UNE_TUNE_SEX_AGE_DUR_NB)
- History
- no data
Note: Derived from ILOSTAT unemployment by duration: 12 months or more over the unemployed whose duration is stated, both sexes, age 15 and over, a labour force survey preferred where ILOSTAT holds more than one. Read it beside the unemployment rate, because a high share means two different things: slow reallocation, where people who lose work stay out of it (South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria), or a small residual pool in a tight market, where the few left unemployed are the hardest to place (Switzerland, Japan). Some national questionnaires cannot record a long search, so the adapter runs a plausibility gate on every country: it drops a year under 3%, every year of a survey whose median is under 3%, a one- or two-year spike of more than 15 points that the series returns from, and a latest year that jumps more than 15 points with no later year to confirm it, then emits the latest year that survives. Every dropped value is logged in the source memo. See D120.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 0.093index 0-1, lower = more diversified
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- UNCTAD (US.ConcentDiversIndices)
- History
- one year
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 5.65% of products not exported competitively at the start
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- Harvard Growth Lab (hs92_country_product_year_4.csv (doi:10.7910/DVN/T4CHWJ))
- History
- one year
Disaster preparedness and recovery
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- INFORM / UNDRR
- History
- no data
Note: No source observes a country preparing for or recovering from a real shock. INFORM publishes its lack of coping capacity apart from hazard and exposure, but that dimension averages government self-assessments and governance perception indices with stocks such as roads, phones and physicians, which is the perception layer D23 retired plus conditions money buys (D122). Sendai and WHO reporting are governments grading themselves. A warning-reach survey item is a check candidate. See the disaster preparedness memo.
Institutional responsiveness
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no dataindex 0-100
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: No dataset exists. Measurable in principle from legislative and regulatory timestamps, which no one has assembled comparably.
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Labour force participationWorld Bank (SL.TLF.ACTI.ZS), 2025
74 % aged 15+, rank 47 of 125. Share of the working-age population in the labour force.
A condition, not scored: how much of the population is in the labor force at all is what a country has to reallocate, a level set by norms, schooling and age, not a record of it reallocating (D141). Participation norms confound it, especially for India. Adaptability reads reallocation through long-term unemployment and export diversification instead.
Fixed broadband subscriptionsWorld Bank (IT.NET.BBND.P2), 2024
47.2 per 100 people, rank 3 of 125. Fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 people.
A condition, not scored: installed infrastructure is what a country has to change with, not a record of it changing (D122). Penalizes mobile-first countries such as India and South Africa.
Electricity transmission lossesWorld Bank (EG.ELC.LOSS.ZS), 2023
3.4 % of output, rank 4 of 117. Power lost in transmission and distribution, including unbilled use.
A condition, not scored: the state of the grid, and whether its operator can bill what it delivers, is infrastructure a country has to change with, not a record of it changing (D141). Read it beside broadband, the other installed network beside Adaptability.
Informal employmentILOSTAT (DF_SDG_0831_SEX_ECO_RT)
No value for this country. Informal employment as a share of total employment, SDG indicator 8.3.1.
A condition, not scored: how much work carries no contract, registration or social protection describes the labor market a country reallocates through, not it reallocating (D150). Read it beside the unemployment rate: where most work is informal, a person who loses a job takes any work within weeks, so a low rate is not a fluid market. Its direction for Adaptability cannot be defended, since informal work is both the slack that absorbs a shock and the precarity that keeps a worker from moving up, so the rank orders values and is not a verdict. Comparability is weak: the European values come from an income survey (EU-SILC) with a proxy definition, and the rest from labor force or household surveys processed by the ILO. ILOSTAT has no value for the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Israel, Malaysia, China, the Philippines or Cuba, and some values are old (Haiti and Nicaragua 2012).
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
Dynamic zero-COVID containment, and its dismantling
China's State Council joint prevention and control mechanism ran a national COVID-19 containment regime from January 2020, under which the mainland had reported 4,634 COVID-19 deaths when vaccination began on 15 December 2020; it dismantled the regime by circular on 7 December 2022, and the National Health Commission then reported 59,938 COVID-related deaths in medical institutions between 8 December 2022 and 12 January 2023.
59,938 deaths, covid-related deaths in medical institutions in the five weeks after the regime was dismantled, 2022-12-08 to 2023-01-12. 4,634 deaths, cumulative reported covid-19 deaths under containment, at the start of vaccination, 2020-12-15. Xinhua report of a National Health Commission press conference of the State Council joint COVID-19 prevention and control mechanism, published on the State Council portal (english.www.gov.cn), retrieved 2026-10-01.
How it worked: The State Council joint prevention and control mechanism used mass testing, health codes and area lockdowns to hold infections near zero for nearly three years, then withdrew the whole apparatus by one circular within weeks, before raising vaccination coverage among the oldest residents. The capacity to suppress was built; the capacity to exit was not prepared in parallel.
Limits: Both numbers are the government's own and both are made under counting rules that understate deaths: the 59,938 covers only deaths inside medical institutions, and independent estimates put excess deaths far above the official count, so the official figure is a floor, not the toll. The two metrics cover different periods, populations at risk and counting rules (a cumulative count over 11 months against a five-week in-hospital count), so their ratio is not a mortality comparison. The SCIO text carrying 4,634 is an advocacy piece republished by the State Council Information Office, not a statistical release. The record does not show the costs of containment itself (lockdowns, lost output, mental-health and access-to-care harms), which were part of why it ended, nor that the dismantling followed Omicron's transmissibility rather than a planned exit. What it shows about preparedness is the exit gap: the State Council portal reported on 30 November 2022 that only 65.8 percent of people aged 80 and over had completed primary vaccination (english.www.gov.cn/statecouncil/ministries/202211/30/content_WS6386aabec6d0a757729e3d55.html), a week before the regime was lifted, and 90.1 percent of the reported deaths were aged 65 and above. The construct fit is contestable: the record evidences a national shock-containment capacity and its abrupt removal, not a standing disaster-recovery system. No official series of excess mortality for 2022-2023 has been published that would let the reversal be sized properly.
Phased exemption of enterprise social insurance contributions, 2020
China's human resources ministry, finance ministry and tax administration let provinces exempt or halve employer pension, unemployment and work-injury contributions from February 2020 under a notice dated 20 February, and exemptions, reductions, deferrals and rate cuts together reduced contributions by 1.54 trillion yuan between February and the end of 2020.
1.54 trillion yuan, contributions reduced by exemption, reduction, deferral and rate cuts, february to december 2020, 2020-12. 6,080,000 enterprises, enterprises receiving unemployment insurance job-stabilisation refunds in 2020, 2020-12. National Development and Reform Commission, Employment Department, page of 27 January 2021, republished from China News Service, retrieved 2026-10-02.
How it worked: Three central agencies used the Social Insurance Law's authority to suspend the employer share of contributions by notice, and the tax administration, which collects them, applied it from the next collection cycle.
Limits: The figure is a government figure republished by the NDRC Employment Department from China News Service (ไธญๅฝๆฐ้ป็ฝ), which the page names as its source; the page does not name the originating ministry or event, and the figure does not appear in the human resources ministry's 2020 statistical bulletin. It adds exemptions, reductions, deferrals and rate cuts together, and the rate cuts include reductions in force before the February 2020 notice, and a deferral is postponed rather than forgiven, so 1.54 trillion yuan overstates the relief. The rule itself is dated by the notice (Ren She Bu Fa 2020 No. 11, 2020-02-20, https://www.gov.cn/zhengce/zhengceku/2020-02/21/content_5481861.htm), which let provinces exempt small firms for up to five months and halve large firms' contributions for up to three. The cost landed on the funds: the same page reports 2020 revenue of 5.02 trillion yuan against spending of 5.75 trillion. This is relief for enterprises that pay contributions, not for informal workers.
Panel estimate, round 2, how this layer works
- 68.0 institutionalist@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
I hold 68: export diversification and new products are genuine structural reallocation, but the suspended youth unemployment series and the slow property adjustment show rigidities, and migrant reallocation happens under a hukou system that limits it.
- 71.0 bottom_up@claude-opus-5-5, self-confidence 0.45
Near hold. Export diversification and new products are real reallocation, and hundreds of millions of migrant workers move between regions and sectors informally; suspended youth unemployment data and the slow property adjustment pull below the indicator.
- 69.0 wealth_sceptic@claude-sonnet-5-5, self-confidence 0.40
I rise from 68 to 69. Export diversification and new export products are reallocation evidence, and informal migrant labour reallocation which B cites is real. Registered unemployment is a weak signal, youth unemployment publication was suspended in 2023 and the property adjustment has been slow.
Building
How capable is the country of turning plans and knowledge into functioning systems?
-5.1 over 10 years, from 76.9 in 2016 to 71.8 on 3 indicators seen in both years.
Trends use fewer indicators than the current score and use today's frame. A longer span reaches further back.
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 24.734% of GDP
- Year
- 2025. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (NV.IND.MANF.ZS)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 26.278% of manufactured exports
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (TX.VAL.TECH.MF.ZS)
- History
Logistics infrastructure quality
perception proxyretired, see notes- Raw value
- no dataindex 1-5
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- World Bank (LP.LPI.INFR.XQ)
- History
- no data
Note: Retired 2026-08-26. An LPI sub-index, so the same freight-forwarder survey as logistics performance and the same problem. Electricity connection speed stays as the observable infrastructure measure in this dimension. See D23.
direct capability measureobserved
- Raw value
- 93.913score 0-100
- Year
- 2019. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (IC.ELC.TIME.DFRN)
- History
downstream outcomeobserved
- Raw value
- 37.727index
- Year
- 2024. The rail runs from 1960 to 2026.
- Normalized
- Source
- World Bank (EF.EFM.UNIV.XD)
- History
Large project delivery
direct capability measureno dataset exists, 1 record- Raw value
- no data% overrun
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- none
- History
- no data
Note: The single best measure of execution capability and there is no comparable international dataset. Assembling one is a defensible Envisioning project. Building mixes industrial output with state delivery capacity, and this indicator carries the delivery side: the other six indicators cannot see a national programme that was delivered. Documented deliveries are recorded in data/evidence and never scored, see D20.
Firm scale-up rate
direct capability measureno dataset exists- Raw value
- no data% of firms
- Year
- no data
- Normalized
- no data
- Source
- OECD DynEmp
- History
- no data
Note: OECD business dynamics work covers members irregularly. Nothing comparable for India, Brazil or South Africa.
Conditions, not scored
What the country has to work with on this capability. The values are shown as the source published them and are not part of the score, the confidence or the trend. The rank counts the countries with a value, best first.
Output per workerWorld Bank (SL.GDP.PCAP.EM.KD), 2025
48,126 constant 2021 PPP $, rank 62 of 123. GDP per person employed, constant purchasing power parity.
A condition, not scored: output per worker is income per worker, the wealth the benchmark tests capability against, so it is published beside Building as context (D122).
Evidence for missing indicators
Each record describes a case the indicators above cannot see. It does not affect the score or confidence because one case is not comparable across countries. A gap can become an indicator when a comparable series covers at least two countries.
National high-speed rail network
China's railway authorities built a high-speed rail network that the National Railway Administration put at about 47,000 km in operation in December 2024, from a programme that began in 2003; a World Bank review of the 27 lines in operation at the end of 2013 found a weighted average approved unit cost of RMB 129m per km for 350 km/h lines, which it put at no more than two-thirds of costs elsewhere.
47,000 km (about), high-speed rail track in operation, 2024-12. 129 RMB million per km, weighted average unit cost of 350 km/h lines, approved estimates, lines in operation at end 2013, 2013. Statement of the National Railway Administration of China reported by Xinhua, on the State Council portal (english.www.gov.cn), retrieved 2026-10-01.
How it worked: The former Ministry of Railways and its successors standardised designs, viaduct and station types and procurement across a national programme, then built continuously for two decades, so each line reused the previous line's templates, supply chain and crews.
Limits: Neither number is the overrun this gap asks for. The World Bank unit cost is built from estimated cost at project approval, not out-turn cost, so it cannot show whether lines came in over or under budget; the note itself warns that the data exist only in aggregate, that expenditures fall in different years and may not be comparable, and that its inputs come from China Railway and former Ministry of Railways publications. It is a 2014 staff note in a working series, covering about 10,000 km built by 2013, not the 47,000 km now operating, and the World Bank lends to Chinese railway projects. The 47,000 km figure is a rounded administrative statement by the regulator, relayed by Xinhua on the State Council portal, not a statistical table. Neither source shows the financing side: the debt carried by China State Railway Group and its predecessor, the low traffic density on many later lines, or the 2011 Wenzhou collision and the corruption cases at the former Ministry of Railways. Low unit cost also reflects cheap labour and land acquisition terms that are not institutional choices other countries can copy. No schedule-performance figure was found at an official URL.