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Why China's social-credit system gets thumbs-up from citizens

London (Dec 31, 2019): The Chinese social-credit system has been given an unequivocally negative reception by the media in the West. Set to be rolled out nationwide in 2020, the system has even been described by one journalist as China's "most ambitious project in social engineering since the Cultural Revolution".

Once the system is fully implemented, Chinese citizens will be given a social-credit score based on their deeds. For example, failure to pay a court bill or playing loud music in public may cause a low score.

This score can dictate what rights people have. Those on the "blacklist" are prevented from buying plane or train tickets, for instance, as well as working as civil servants or in certain industries.

The fact that Big Data and facial-recognition technology will be applied for the purpose of monitoring citizens raises various concerns. The scheme has even been described as a dystopian nightmare straight out of Black Mirror. But what these accounts lack is a sense of how the system is perceived from within China, which turns out to be rather complicated.

(READ: China: High trust in govt, but sceptical about businesses)

Contrary to what many people in the West believe, in private and during informal talks among friends, ordinary Chinese are not shy or concerned about expressing their opinions about politics... And they're worried about what is seen as an intensifying crisis of public morality.

"Living in China...you have to be always on guard against others as pits of fraud are everywhere," said Mr Zhu, a man in his 40s. He was explaining his reluctance to let his mother use a smartphone as she may fall prey to online scammers.

He was not alone in worrying about what is seen as an intensifying crisis of public morality. Another woman — the mother of a newborn baby searching for a nanny — ended up installing secret cameras at home to help her choose a trustworthy one.

The people I spoke to seemed less concerned about giving up some privacy if it meant a significantly higher degree of security and certainty. Many perceived the new social-credit system as a national project to boost public morality through fighting fraud and crime and combatting what is currently seen as a nationwide crisis of trust.

There is a widely held consensus that the punishment for these offences is not enough to deter re-offending, with people committing crimes in one province and setting up a business in another the next day with few consequences. Some believe the social-credit system will remedy this through the blacklisting system.

'Social credit' inspired by the West

There is also another narrative which says that Western society is "civilised" because of a long-existing credit system. But this narrative is largely based on an imagined version of Western society. Many also assume that the idea of a social-credit system in China was actually imported from the West.

There are many apocryphal stories linked to this myth, including one about a Chinese graduate who finds herself outside China in a Western city and — despite being qualified — cannot secure a job, because of her past record of fare dodging on trains (an offence which stayed on her credit record).

The point of the story is that in Western societies, people who break even minor rules suffer significant consequences. Stories like this use "the West" as a moral showcase of what a "civilised" society should be. These stories may be false, but they are reflections of a commonly held belief that these problems were created by individualism and modernity in China and that the West dealt with the transition to modernity more effectively.

China's own transition from an agricultural collective society (where people always knew who they were dealing with) to a modern one characterised by reliance on strangers has led people to believe that navigating this requires guidance.

CNA.ASIA (First published in The Conversation)


About the author: This piece was contributed Dr Wang Xinyuan, a research associate in the Department of Anthropology at University College London. She conducted a 16-month ethnographic study in China in 2018 and 2019, to gain a holistic understanding of the daily lives of ordinary Chinese people.