China’s Social Credit System has fundamentally re-shaped of surveillance worldwide, with discussions of it making it into hundreds of media headlines and all the way into European Union legislation and the United Nations. Social Credit offers one of the first comprehensive assessments of this infamous system. It is aimed at the many experts and professionals – both scholarly and more broadly – that have to deal with its fallout on a regular basis. In a concise format, it covers the questions that have garnered the most attention worldwide: from social credit scoring and blacklists to its history and theoretical foundation. Throughout, its core thesis is that more often than not, even China’s government is at a loss what to do with this messy and complex initiative. This has caused fragmented and low-tech implementation, but where insufficient legal safeguards can have far-reaching implications for the normal market order and for human rights.
Author(s): Vincent Brussee
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 212
City: London
Acknowledgements
Contents
Abbreviations
List of Figures
List of Tables
1 Introduction
Wrapped Tableware, Train Announcements, and Shared Bikes
Getting Social Credit Right is Key to Understanding Twenty-First-Century Surveillance
Making Sense of Social Credit
Outline of the Book
Notes
2 The Social Credit System’s Emergence and Global Roots
The Emergence of the Social Credit System
The Trifecta of “Credit” Problems
A Lack of Credit Management Systems Threatened Financial Stability
China’s Government Was Unable to Effectively Enforce Legal Obligations
A Moral Vacuum
How the “West” Inspired China’s Social Credit System
A Warning Sign for China
Where the SCS Deviates from Established Credit Systems
Notes
3 The Policy Umbrella of Social Credit
Confused
Systems-Engineering China
Social Credit as a Mechanism
Merging Finance, Market Regulation, and “Morality”
Zhengxin: Credit Reporting for Banking and Finance
Xinyong: Credit and Trustworthiness
Chengxin: Honesty and Integrity
Trust Everywhere, in Everyone, and Everything
Government Affairs
Commerce and Businesses
Societal Trustworthiness or Individuals
Credibility for the Judiciary
The Relationship Between the Market and Government Under the SCS
Market Credit Information
Public Credit Information
It’s Messy
Notes
4 Limitless Expansion, Fragmented Development: A Policy History of the Social Credit System (2002–2020)
Setting Sail
Experimentation Turns into Disorientation
Enter Phase Two: The Planning Outline Kicks Development into Fifth Gear
From the Planning Outline to Local Implementation
Fragmentation
Glorified Spreadsheets as Digitisation
Creating Space for Abuse
Ambition Meets Bureaucratic Reality
Notes
5 No Credit for Culprits
Untrustworthy
A Web of Blacklists
Enforcing Court Judgements
Sectoral Blacklists
No-Ride and No-Fly Lists
Humans Pushing Buttons
Naming and Shaming
Seeing Red
Who Are the Culprits?
European Firms Are the Gold Standard of Credit
Repairing One’s Credit
Evaluating Success and Concerns: Not Black And White Red
Notes
6 One Step Back to Put More Forward: The COVID-19 Pandemic and Its Aftermath
Viral Issues
Flexible Yet Legally Ambiguous
The Central Government Pulls in the Reins
Less is More
The Next Step Forward: Credit Risk Classification and Management
Notes
7 Mythbusters: Anatomy of Social Credit Scoring
1984?
The Emergence of the Myth
Social Credit Scoring in Practice—More Myth Than Reality
Early Experiments with Financial Credit Scoring
Blurred Lines and Controversies
Eliminating the Last Little Ambiguities
Xi Would Not Care for a Social Credit Score
Non-credit Scoring in China
Building a Good Policy Response to the Social Credit System
Social Credit as a Mirror
Notes
8 The Future of the Social Credit System
A Strange Law
Future Priorities
Notes
Index
