On the Way to Ever More Perfect Harmonious Development: China's Rejuvenation Index

Having access to data that surpasses our ability to interpret it effectively is a condition of contemporary management.

This has some advantages, such as offering a soothing confidence that everything will work out for the best if we can just find the right combination of information and wisdom residing in the warm confines of our vast server farms.

There are also, of course,  pitfalls, such as that which makes us susceptible to the belief that we can explain the modern condition with one simple number that purports to capture all of the essential elements of our existence. We agree that it is at least theoretically conceivable that this could happen some day. But we're guessing it's probably not going to be today. And next week's not looking so hot either.

That said, we certainly don't want to discourage anyone from trying or from sharing their concepts, methods, processes and discoveries. So it is with mixed feelings that we greet the Chinese Rejuvenation Index. As the following article explains, this was created by China's state planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, in response to a pledge by the government to rejuvenate the nation.

As a philosophical matter, we are strongly in favor of rejuvenation. It's right up there with motherhood and Szechuan garlic chicken. We are also 100% behind the effort to try to measure it, just as we believe that trying to capture 'the delta' - the change - in a condition is a very useful indicator of progress. We simply urge caution when it comes to ironing out all those details. JL

Jamil Anderlini reports in the Financial Times:

By the end of 2012, the Chinese nation was 65.3 per cent rejuvenated, according to the “Chinese nation rejuvenation index” published this week by the Social Development Research Centre of the National Development and Reform Commission, China’s powerful state planning agency

Chinese president Xi Jinping has pledged to reduce the role of central planning in the economy and usher in the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”. But if the latest pronouncement from a senior state planning official is anything to go by then Mr Xi has a long way to go on both counts.

That was an enormous improvement on the 46.4 per cent recorded in 2005 and steady progress from 2010’s 62.7 per cent level, according to Yang Yiyong, director of the research centre and the main author of the rejuvenation index. Not surprisingly, Mr Yang’s index has been greeted with derision by many ordinary Chinese people and online commentators.
“Most people can’t afford to buy a house, see a doctor when they’re sick or pay for schooling and the retirement age keeps being raised; can we really call this rejuvenation?” asked Fenyi, a popular online commentator with more than 110,000 followers on China’s twitter-like Weibo service.
“There’s a rejuvenation index and it goes up every year? Can I invest in it?” asked another online commentator writing under a pseudonym.

In an interview with state media, Mr Yang likened his index to the “happiness indices” that economists in various countries have started to compile and said he used a wide array of measurable criteria to reach his conclusion.

These broadly fell under several categories, which he identified as: economic measures of national strength; prowess in technology, education and healthcare; “even more perfect socialist democracy” and “even more complete rule of law”.

Other criteria he used to judge how well China is rejuvenating were its level of sustainable development and “harmonious development between humans and nature” as well as progress in “unifying the motherland”.

In response to some of the online criticism, Mr Yang said his goal was not to “try to please the public with claptrap” but to “use various indicators to discover where the problems exist in the process of rejuvenation”.
Around six years ago China explored using “green GDP” as a measure to capture the environmental costs of the country’s energy-intensive and highly polluting rapid growth, but the attempt was abandoned because of difficulties in quantifying those costs.
“Of course GDP doesn’t capture everything so economists have been looking for other measures of wellbeing but [Mr Yang’s rejuvenation index] probably isn’t going to catch on internationally,” said Stephen Green, head of China research at Standard Chartered.

Zhou Pengan, a member of a government advisory body in Anhui province, has publicly claimed to have found the real formula for Mr Yang’s index.
Mr Zhou worked out the number of days between 1949 and 2049 – 100 years from the founding of the People’s Republic of China – then calculated the proportion of days that had passed by the start of July, 2012, when Mr Yang first published his rejuvenation index for the year 2010.
The result was 62.74 per cent of the 100 years had passed by then – exactly the same level of rejuvenation that Mr Yang said had been achieved in China by the end of 2010.