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Zhu Wenqian

A Beijing-based governmental think tank has taken the rare step of lowering China’s global financial competitiveness ranking by one place, despite top leaders of the world’s second-largest economy vowing to build it into a financial superpower.
China ranks fifth globally in financial competitiveness in 2026, behind the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom and Germany, slipping one place from last year’s standing, a new report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) found.
“China’s lower ranking, mainly due to stock market volatility in 2024 and 2025, put it 0.09 points behind Germany,” said Liu Dongmin, a senior research fellow at the Institute of World Economics and Politics of the CASS.
Countries ranking from sixth to 10th were Canada, South Korea, France, Australia and Switzerland, respectively, said the report, which evaluated 31 countries globally and was released on Friday during the Global Digital Economy Conference 2026 in Beijing.
Introduced in 2021, the ranking system evaluates economies on five criteria: the competitiveness of the financial industry, currency, financial infrastructure, fintech and international financial governance.
Global financial competitiveness refers to an economy’s ability to allocate financial resources and manage risks more efficiently than others to drive economic and social development, CASS said.


In the fintech competitiveness indicator, China had the smallest gap with world leaders, ranking third after the US and UK.
“While the US is advancing fast [in fintech], China is the only top 10 country steadily closing its gap with the US,” Liu said. “Fintech is the metric where China has the best chance to climb higher, serving as its core competitive strength and biggest confidence going forward.”
The absolute score of US global financial competitiveness rose from last year, underpinned by the US dollar’s international status. The yuan’s global standing still lagged China’s economic scale, with substantial potential for further internationalisation compared with the US dollar and euro, Liu added.
The digital economy and artificial intelligence are reshaping global and domestic industries.
“Mainland China’s AI and digital finance innovations show strong scale effects and fast commercialisation this year,” said Sara Huang, chief operating officer of the Hong Kong Generative AI Research and Development Centre.
Cooperation between mainland China and Hong Kong in AI and digital finance has evolved from capital and talent exchanges to complementary underlying technologies and joint ecosystem development.
They were expected to deepen collaboration in cross-border connectivity of data and computing power in the Greater Bay Area, Huang added.


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A Beijing think tank dropped China’s world ranking to fifth place, behind the US, Japan, UK and Germany following stock market volatility


A Beijing think tank dropped China’s world ranking to fifth place, behind the US, Japan, UK and Germany following stock market volatility.


Why has China lowered its own ranking in global financial competitiveness?

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}A Beijing think tank dropped China’s world ranking to fifth place, behind the US, Japan, UK and Germany following stock market volatility

A Beijing think tank dropped China’s world ranking to fifth place, behind the US, Japan, UK and Germany following stock market volatility