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Key Definitions

  • PRC: People’s Republic of China. We use this term and not China nor the Chinese Communist Party.
  • PRC Influence: The power to affect the decisions of other countries so that they align with the interests of the PRC.
  • PRC-connected individuals or entities: individuals or organizations (such as businesses) that have a connection to the PRC’s official party-state apparatus.
  • Indicator: A question asking about a phenomenon expressing PRC influence.
  • Domain: A specific area in which the PRC may exert its influence.
The data underlying the China Index will be collected via a questionnaire distributed to regional partners. Eligible partners will include qualified, nonpartisan research institutes, think tanks, community representatives, as well as civil society organizations. Considering the challenge of conducting a large survey on a global scale, and especially given the controversial nature of the topic, the questionnaire will only focus on factual indicators, eschewing any questions which may elicit the opinions, preferences, or judgments of respondents. We will ask regional partners to consult and verify the data with local experts as much as possible. Each response should be backed by evidence from at least one supporting reference; this supporting evidence will be published with the final results. We will endeavor to ensure that the questions in each domain are independent and are equally important for measuring the PRC’s influence. However, in the case that some questions outweigh others in several regions, we will apply a weighting scheme (TBD) to the domains, in order to balance their contributions to the final score. For example, if a regional partner can demonstrate that PRC influence in the military domain has a disproportionate impact on the regional level, the indicators in the military domain may be granted a higher weight for all the countries’ from that region. The indicators will cover the period from January of the previous year, up to the date the responses to the indicators are collected. For example, for the first iteration of China Index, the responses are collected from March 2021. Therefore, the period covered by each indicator is January 2020 to March 2021. The final score will be determined by adding scores from all the indicators and presented as a percentage (0-100%). Two different rankings will be shown in the narrative report and on the CITW website:
  • Normalized: Determined by adding up scores for all 99 questions in the questionnaire and dividing by the maximum possible score.
  • Regionally weighted (Trial): Determined by applying a weighting scheme to each domain in each region, based on the proposals of regional partners, according to their analysis of local context. (See this document for details)