TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan still ranks as the highest Asian nation in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Democracy Index for 2022, even though it lost two spots on the overall list, reports said Thursday (Feb. 2).

Norway, New Zealand, and Iceland occupied the three top spots, while Switzerland and the Netherlands edged their way past Taiwan, which dropped to No. 10 from No. 8 in the previous list, the Liberty Times reported. Japan was the only other Asian country in the top 20, moving up one spot to No. 16.

Taiwan scored an overall 8.99 points out of 10, with a 10 for electoral process and pluralism, and its lowest mark, a 7.73 for political participation.

The EIU said it used 60 indicators grouped in five categories to determine the countries' scores, including electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. For each category, a country is awarded a score between zero and 10, with the final result the average of the scores for the five categories.

The ending of restrictive COVID-19 measures in many countries has brought some measure of improvement for global democracy, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine offset some of the recovery, according to the EIU. China dropped from No. 148 to No. 156 out of 167 countries evaluated in the report.