On January 11, 2016, the People’s Bank of China (PBC) issued the Notice by the General Administration Department of the People’s Bank of China on Establishing a Survey System for Consumer Financial Literacy (Trial) to officially establish a survey system for consumer financial literacy. In 2017 and 2019, the Financial Consumer Protection Bureau (FCPB) of the PBC conducted surveys on consumer financial literacy in 31 provincial administrative units (excluding Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) across the country. Since the outbreak of Covid-19 in 2020, the FCPB improved the survey methods and content in line with the pandemic containment requirements and the latest economic and financial developments. It rolled out the third nation-wide survey on consumer financial literacy in April 2021 after the smooth completion of preliminary tests and training,
The survey adopted the probability-proportion-to-size (PPS) sampling technique and identified 3,927 towns and streets as primary survey places, with the coverage ratio standing at around 10 percent. It electronically collected around 140,000 sample data from adult respondents across 31 provincial administrative units (excluding Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan), covering 333 prefecture-level and 2,200 county-level administrative units. The number of valid samples was 118,775.
Based on both qualitative and quantitative analysis of the survey data, the PBC issued the 2021 Financial Literacy Survey. According to the findings, Chinese consumers scored 66.81 on the financial literacy index, rising 2.04 points from 2019. The report provides a comprehensive, qualitative analysis of consumer financial literacy from multiple perspectives such as consumer financial knowledge, behaviors, attitudes and skills. On the whole, Chinese residents scored well in the assessment of financial attitudes but diverged greatly in different aspects of financial behaviors and skills, still in need of improving their basic financial knowledge. Senior residents and teenagers showed a lower level of financial literacy, and these two groups, namely“the senior and the junior”, remain as the main focus of financial education.
The report comprises five parts. The first four parts provide a qualitative analysis of consumers in financial knowledge, behaviors, skills and attitudes, and describe them from the perspectives of age, education, income, occupation, gender, region, and whether living in rural or urban areas. The fifth part analyzes Chinese residents’ overall financial literacy comprehensively. Compared with their international counterparts, Chinese residents scored above the average with strength in financial attitudes in particular, but they fell behind in basic financial knowledge. In terms of financial attitudes, Chinese residents save relatively sufficiently for emergencies, providing solid support for China’s economic recovery amid the pandemic and reflecting the strong resilience of the Chinese economy. In terms of financial knowledge, the public still lack sufficient understanding about such basic financial knowledge as investment diversification. Their irrational expectations of the return on financial investment make them vulnerable to irrational investment behaviors. In terms of priority groups, the distribution of Chinese residents’ financial literacy among various age groups presents an inverted U shape, with senior residents and teenagers on the lower end. So these two groups, namely “the senior and the junior”, remain as the main focus of financial education.
