清廉指数Corruption Perception Index

Integrity (probity) is the cornerstone of governance. The supervision and restraint of power, the soundness and enforcement of the rule of law, and the openness and transparency of government affairs determine whether a country can devote public resources to public welfare, and also determine the quality and sustainability of its economic and social development. Corruption erodes public trust, distorts resource allocation, and raises transaction costs, ultimately at the expense of all citizens.

Internationally prevailing integrity evaluations mostly center on the "Corruption Perceptions Index", whose core is subjective questionnaire surveys of experts and business people. It has reference value, but inherently carries subjectivity, lag, and "perception bias"—for economies with significant real anti-corruption results and rapidly advancing institutional building, their "perception" often needs a long time to catch up with objective facts.

This index does not directly reproduce the ranks of any existing integrity list, but follows CPPPS's own evaluation algorithm, using underlying public data (economic scale and public fiscal scale, rule-of-law level, audit supervision, government transparency, digital government, open government, institutional anti-corruption, case-investigation intensity, and fugitive repatriation and asset recovery plus international anti-corruption cooperation) to comprehensively evaluate 30 major economies worldwide across four dimensions: Scale, Quality, Innovation, and Contribution. The "Contribution" dimension is a CPPPS signature: based on verifiable institutional building and law-enforcement results, it affirms achievements in advancing integrity governance through institutional anti-corruption and rule-of-law construction.

Results: China, the United States, Sweden, Norway, and Germany rank in the top five. Overall, economies with sound rule of law, independent auditing, transparent government affairs, and leading digital governance rank ahead; economies that advance institutional anti-corruption through full and rigorous party self-governance, supervision-system reform, and the integrated "hunting tigers, swatting flies, and chasing foxes" campaign rank prominently on the strength of the "Contribution" dimension; economies with weak rule-of-law and supervision foundations and weak law enforcement rank behind. All data in this ranking are approximations of public knowledge, marked "subject to official figures", permanently free and public, for research and reference only.

The essence of integrity is "the incorruptible operation of power", involving four layers: "institution, capability, action, and effectiveness". Ranking solely by subjective "perception" can neither timely reflect institutional building and law-enforcement results, nor distinguish "low corruption stock" from "strong anti-corruption increment". This algorithm therefore decomposes the evaluation into four orthogonal dimensions:

Each indicator is first mapped to [0,1] through min-max normalization; large-span scale indicators (economic scale, fiscal expenditure) take the natural logarithm to avoid head monopoly, and are then weighted hierarchically:

In the formulas, (′) denotes the [0,1] value after min-max normalization; 0–100 scores for rule of law, auditing, transparency, and digital government are all standardized positively; scale indicators are log-transformed before normalization, so that differences among median economies are not swallowed by a few top massive actors.

The logic of the weight design: Quality (0.30) carries the highest weight because rule of law, auditing, and transparency are the most essential "institutional face" of integrity governance; Innovation and Contribution (0.25 each) are tied next, highlighting the "technological increment" of digital anti-corruption and the "effectiveness increment" of institutional anti-corruption; Scale (0.20) has the lowest weight, serving only as the baseline of "weight/responsibility" to avoid large economies enjoying an automatic advantage from sheer size. Within the Contribution dimension, "institutional anti-corruption" dominates (0.40), affirming institutional building rather than a reckoning with historical abuses.

Economic scale (nominal GDP) and government fiscal expenditure use approximations of public data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and national statistical/fiscal agencies; scores for rule of law, audit supervision, government transparency, digital government, open government, institutional anti-corruption, case investigation, and fugitive repatriation and asset recovery integrate approximations of public information from national audit institutions, supervision/anti-corruption agencies' annual reports, the UN E-Government Survey (EGDI), and the World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI), marked "subject to official figures". This model does not directly adopt the ranks of any existing integrity list; because countries differ greatly in anti-corruption scope and judicial openness, approximate scores carry some error, and the ranking is for research and reference only.