The Chinese Social Credit System (SCS) is a novel digital socio-technical credit system. The SCS aims to regulate societal behavior by reputational and material devices. Scholarship on the SCS has ...offered a variety of legal and theoretical perspectives. However, little is known about its actual implementation. Here, we provide the first comprehensive empirical study of digital blacklists (listing "bad" behavior) and redlists (listing "good" behavior) in the Chinese SCS. Based on a unique data set of reputational blacklists and redlists in 30 Chinese provincial-level administrative divisions (ADs), we show the diversity, flexibility, and comprehensiveness of the SCS listing infrastructure. First, our results demonstrate that the Chinese SCS unfolds in a highly diversified manner: we find differences in accessibility, interface design and credit information across provincial-level SCS blacklists and redlists. Second, SCS listings are flexible. During the COVID-19 outbreak, we observe a swift addition of blacklists and redlists that helps strengthen the compliance with coronavirus-related norms and regulations. Third, the SCS listing infrastructure is comprehensive. Overall, we identify 273 blacklists and 154 redlists across provincial-level ADs. Our blacklist and redlist taxonomy highlights that the SCS listing infrastructure prioritizes law enforcement and industry regulations. We also identify redlists that reward political and moral behavior. Our study substantiates the enormous scale and diversity of the Chinese SCS and puts the debate on its reach and societal impact on firmer ground. Finally, we initiate a discussion on the ethical dimensions of data-driven research on the SCS.
The emergence of big data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is reshaping the world. While the technological revolution improves the quality of our life, new concerns are triggered. The ...superhuman capability enables AI to outperform human workers in many data-and/or computing-intensive tasks. Also, digital superpowers are showing arrogance towards individuals, which erodes the trust foundation of the society. In this position paper, we suggest to construct trustworthy and safe communities based on a BLockchain-Enabled Social credits System (BLESS) that rewards the residents who commit in socially beneficial activities. Human being's true value lies in serving other people. The BLESS system is considered as an efficient approach to promote the value and dignity in efforts focused on enhancing our communities and regulating business and private behaviors. The BLESS system leverages the decentralized architecture of the blockchain network, which not only allows grassroots individuals to participate rating process of a social credit system (SCS), but also provides tamper proof of transaction data in the trustless network environment. The anonymity in blockchain records also protects individuals from being targeted in the fight against powerful enterprises. Smart contract enabled authentication and authorization strategy prevents any unauthorized entity from accessing the credit system. The BLESS scheme is promising to offer a secure, transparent and decentralized SCS.
Abstract
What counts as evidence of good performance, behaviour or character? While quantitative metrics have long been used to measure performance and productivity in schools, factories and ...workplaces, what is striking today is the extent to which these calculative methods and rationalities are being extended into new areas of life through the global spread of performance indicators (PIs) and performance management systems. What began as part of the neoliberalising projects of the 1980s with a few strategically chosen PIs to give greater state control over the public sector through contract management and mobilising ‘users’ has now proliferated to include almost every aspect of professional work. The use of metrics has also expanded from managing professionals to controlling entire populations. This chapter focuses on the rise of these new forms of audit and their effects in two areas: first, the alliance being formed between state-collected data and that collected by commercial companies on their customers through, for example loyalty cards and credit checks. Second, China’s new social credit system, which allocates individual scores to each citizen and uses rewards of better or privileged service to entice people to volunteer information about themselves, publish their ‘ratings’ and compete with friends for status points. This is a new development in the use of audit simultaneously to discipline whole populations and responsibilise individuals to perform according to new state and commercial norms about the reliable/conforming ‘good’ citizen.
PDF
