The SCS has catalysed the Chinese government’s efforts to digitise and pool public data, particularly within the realm of administrative regulations and laws, towards its use as a form of reputation that is now institutionalised in government decision-making around allocation of resources and services, evident in both the blacklists and citizen scores.
The creation of public credit platforms can be seen as a significant landmark in Chinese government efforts at collecting public data, chipping away at the ‘data islands’ between ministries and departments, an aspect of government data that Rogier Creemers also discusses in his essay in this collection. Studies of open government data platforms reveal they meet industry benchmarks, are fitted with APIs and offer data in a variety of machine readable formats. However, there are question marks around the consistency of data gathering, especially between platforms in the less developed cities away from the east coast. Conversations with officials also suggest there is still work to do in building a culture of digital record keeping, with some departments still lagging behind and relying on physical documents.
The blacklist-JSR regime has strengthened considerably with real implications for individuals and businesses. Data published on the blacklist platform indicates that, for every two names added to the list each month, one is removed. This suggests that the system is encouraging individuals and firms to take desired actions. The expansion from the judgement defaulter list to other areas reflects the government’s view on its effectiveness, although it is difficult to answer conclusively if the policy is truly achieving the goal of individuals and firms behaving more in a more ‘trustworthy’ manner.
Examining the systems, as this essay has done, largely shows that western media narratives of social credit as a morality score, which is devised by capturing all citizen behaviour, from social media posts to supermarket purchases, and which regulates citizens’ movements and access to basic services, is unfounded. As demonstrated above, the type of data collected is far more limited in scope and national schemes do not involve scoring at all. Even in the pilot cities the scoring is far more benign in nature.
That is not to suggest there are no reasons to be concerned. The system in its present form raises questions of fairness, especially given the growing span of punishments over and above those mandated by existing laws. While important terms such as ‘trustworthiness’ remain undefined in law, the blacklist JSR system continues to expand and impact millions of people. The system itself relies on transparency to achieve some of its goals but individuals have very little knowledge about the type of data collected, which leaves them vulnerable to incorrect data and the implications it can bring, as Danit Gal explores in her essay on ethics. These are some of the problems that deserve further research rather than focusing on potential implications of what the system could one day evolve into. Analysing the SCS from the lens of China as a surveillance state tends to miss the actual story and conflate all surveillance in China, such as law enforcement, into the SCS. As Jeremy Daum, editor of China Law Translate, has emphasised, the problem may be less the SCS itself and rather the ‘bad laws’ that it is trying to enforce more effectively, many of which run counter to core democratic values, such as freedom of speech.
Going into 2020, the final year of the 2014 State Council Plan, discussions around assessing the system are taking place inside and outside of government. These range from assessing the merits of the system and the potential harms it may pose, as well as engaging with questions around fairness, to thorny issues such as privacy and ethics. Parallel to the SCS, legal regimes around data protection are expected to expand and mature over the next couple of years, which will place new boundaries on what type of data can be collected, as well as address a critical question of how data from the private sector can be ‘imported’ into SCS’s initiatives. A ‘credit law’ is currently being drafted, although most experts expect it remains several years away as critical questions around ethics, privacy and fairness are addressed. Yet the biggest question that the Chinese government will have to answer is whether the system is meaningfully improving trust in institutions and catalysing the country’s development trajectory in the way the government believes it can.
