A number of journalists have answered “yes” to this question. Titles such as “China on the way to IT dictatorship” (Axel Dorloff, Deutschlandfunk, June 23, 2018) 10 bear witness to this.

 

Several studies point out that the review of good behavior in China is not new, but has its root not only in Chinese, but also Western models. Chinese scholars find early traces of the system in the personal archive system of the Zhou Dynasty (1045-771 BC).

 

During the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912), officials were evaluated on four criteria: morals, talent, diligence, and age. 11

 

Some authors see surveillance as a historically grown element of Chinese culture. 12

 

This notion becomes more vivid when one considers that to this day the Chinese are under the all-encompassing supervision of Zaowangye the Hearth God, whose powers extend far beyond SCS to even include the appointed time of life as well as the afterlife.

 

Such a kind of social management was established from 1953 onwards. A file was kept on each worker by their place of work, a copy of which was also sent to the local police station.

 

The market economy created a consumer society that, to a significant extent, relativized traditional Chinese values and the return to Chinese tradition and the positive assessment of Confucianism as a movement against “the worship of money”.

 

The SCS, which is much discussed today, was able to build on this development. In this context, it should be noted that Social Credit System is not a fortunate translation for “shehui xinyong”. As a number of authors rightly point out, there is a bundle of "morals and virtues such as trustworthiness, keeping promises and regulations, integrity and rectitude" in this term. 13

 

Chinese scholars explain the reasoning that led to the "reasonable and necessary" SCS concept: 

 

China's legal system is imperfect and often not transparent.

 

The traditional principle of righteousness has suffered and the unifying force of morality is on the wane. 14

 

Jingmei Wu also uses the game theory coming from the West for argumentation: Game theory states that only in the case of long-term repeated games would people choose to be trustworthy in market transactions in order to gain long-term future benefits.

 

Claire Seungeun Lee sees SCS as a "double-edged sword" but sees advantages and also cites a large number of Chinese authors. 15

 

„Credit scores as public goods. The social credit system, which collects individuals’ and companies’ social credit scores, provides social goods.”

 

There are also Western studies that make the background to the development of SCS understandable and predict positive effects under certain conditions. Jonathan Bach of the News School, New York concludes:

 

“Connected to the intersection of the disciplinary power of the state and the regulatory muscle of the market, the SCS hopes to be the ultimate didactic technology. It strives to keep contradictions going without collapsing under their weight.” 16

 

Other studies address the fact that China has followed western models from USA and Germany when developing the SCS and that similar systems exist in other countries such as India as Ramachandra Byrappa points out in his paper written for this symposium or recently in Bologna, Italy.

 

Mo Chen and Jens Großklags outed similarities between the Chinese system and American credit bureaus. 17

 

Karen Li Xan Wong and Amy Shields Dibson also see these similarities: “The infrastructural and cultural foundations for a social credit system exist in western democratic countries. Across many countries, the credit score system has already been introduced and is widely used in many democratic countries in many areas. ... The FICO system determines the creditworthiness of American citizens, has the ability to influence the interest rates offered, as well as whether one can obtain loans, credit cards, and mortgages. ... In Germany, Schufa facilitates geo-point counts ... ” 18

 

Lizzy Rettinger finds similarities between the Chinese SCS and systems in the USA, the UK and Israel. 19

 

Martin Chorzempa, Paul Triolo, and Samm Sacks compare SCS to the Open Government Initiative of data release under the Obama administration. 20 The Austrian Servus TV reported on May 2nd 2022 about the intention of the City of Bologna, Italy to introduce a social credit system with benefits for those who separate their garbage, take public means of transport and engage in cultural activities.

 

When dealing with the topic, it is also important to go back to the beginnings of the SCS in China.

 

In the race to get rich sooner set in motion by Deng Xiaoping, 21 many of those who conducted this competition unfairly got off lightly time and time again.

 

It was therefore the Chinese Supreme Court, with its program of blacklisting those who disobeyed judgments, that pioneered the development of SCS. 22
 

In the meantime, however, according to the 2014 plan, SCS encompasses virtually all areas of the public legal and governance apparatus. 23 While proponents of SCS see it as a positive move “toward service-oriented government,” 24 others see negative implications for the rule of law and human rights.

 

The former British minister for trade Sir Vince Cable comments on the views: "Optimistically, such a system will prevent fraud, ensure compliance with environmental and other standards, and replace 'influencing' and 'connections' (guanxi) with decisions based on an objective point system. 25

 

M. von Bloomberg sees problems in reconciling the penal options in SCS with principles of the rule of law such as "ne bis idem" (no double penalty in the same matter) and nulla poene sine lege (no penalty without a legal basis). 26 She also sees a transparency problem in the definition of "trustworthiness". And further:

 

From the economic point of view, Theresa Krause and Doris Fischer positively emphasized the objectives and elements of SCS. 27

 

In general, the public response to SCS has been positive. Genia Kostka from Freie Universität Berlin reports in her study "China's social credit systems and public opinion: Exploring high levels of approval" that SCS enjoys substantial support among the Chinese population. In an opinion poll she conducted together with a German polling company, only 1% spoke out against the nationwide use of SCS. What was particularly surprising was the finding that it was the richer, better educated, urban citizens who most supported the new system. 28 Kostka, together with Lukas Antoine, also demonstrates that the SCS, as far as it has been applied so far, works. 94.1% of people interviewed reported that their behavior had changed as a result, and among those who were aware of being involved in a pre-government SCS project, 99.4% said they had in at least one way corrected their previous behavior. 29

 

In a recent study, Jessica Reilly, Muyao Lyu and Megan Robertson of BCWG Global point out that SCS is suitable to serve as a tool to strengthen the government's economic governance ability and the domestic market, as a means to promote fair competition as well as market oversight and compliance. 30

 

They close with the sentences: "What remains unclear is how integrated, far-reaching and effective this system will be in practice and when or how soon we can expect the goals of the ambitious social credits policy to become a reality." 31

 

Now and in the future there is a need for patience and objective analysis and hardly any need for polemics and hasty shots in the media.



*About the author：Gerd Kaminski, Professor, executive vice chairman of the Austria China Friendship Association, director of the Austrian Institute of China and Southeast Asia, and director of the European research center of the Institute of human rights law of Huazhong University of science and technology.

 

11 Min Jiang, A brief prehistory of China’s social credit system, Communication and the Public, Vol. 5, No. 3-4, 2020, p. 94-95

 

12 Jaqueline Olson, Beneath the surface of China’s Social Credit System, Bachelor thesis, University of Malm?, 2020, p. 35

 

13 Xin Dai, p. 39

 

14 Jingmei Wu, Reflections on China‘s Credit Reporting Practice, Everling (ed.), p. 20

 

15 Claire Seungeun Lee, Datafication, dataveillance and the social credit system as China’s new normal, Online International Review Vol. 43, No. 6, 2019, p. 960

16 Jonathan Bach, p. 499

 

17 Mo Chen und Jens Gro?klags, An Analysis of the Current State of the Consumer Credit Reporting System in China, Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, Nr. 4, 2020, p. 101

 

18 Karen Li Xan Wong and Amy Shields Dobson. We’re just data: Exploring China’s social credit system in relation to digital platform rating cultures in Westernized democracies, Global Media and China, Vol. 4, No. 2, 2019, p. 225

 

19 Lizzy Rettinger, The Human Rights Implications of China’s Social Credit System, Journal of High Technology Law, Vol. XXI, No. 1, 2021, p. 27-28

 

20 Martin Chorzempa, Paul Triolo and Samm Sacks, 18-14, China’s Social Credit System: A Mark of Progress or a Threat to Privacy?, Petterson Institute for International Economics, Washington, June 2018, S. 2. See also The New York Times International Weekly vom 16.8.21, Beilage des Standard: ?Cameras Watching

Everywhere.“ ?An international search reveals a growing surveillance network.“ und ?Der Standard” vom 7.9.2021, S. 11: ?Gesichtsdatenbank (des Innenministeriums) enth?lt 638.693 Personen.“

21 Today's slogan is: "Let the trustworthy get rich sooner" (quote from Alibaba founder Jack Ma) - Xinyong (SCS) is a combination of homo economicus and homo moralis.– Chenchen Zhang, Governing (through) trustworthiness: technologies of power and subjectification in China's Social Credit System, Critical Asian Studies, Vol. 52, No. 4, p. 578

 

22 Xin Dai, p. 40

 

23 Xin Dai, p. 42

 

24 Jingmei Wu, p. 10

 

25 Vince Cable, The Chinese Conundrum, p. 82