As a promising Social Science Methodology, Structural/Mechanism Explanation (SME) retains the advantages of mechanism-based explanation (ME), particularly its focus on “identifying causal patterns ...from micro-level social phenomena.” It also acknowledging the role of “structure”—seen as “macro-level conditions”—in incentivizing or disincentivizing key mechanisms, thus proving valuable for forecasting their emergence and decline. This article explores the theory of SME and applies it to examine how a revitalized “Legalist political structure coupled with a Confucianist ideological structure” can forecast the mechanisms by which China’s National Social Credit System disciplines and punishes the citizens. This is observed across domains of legislation, administration, judiciary, and propaganda.
Purpose
China is establishing a social credit rating system with the aim to score the trust level of citizens. The scores will be based on an integrated database that includes a vast range of ...information sources, rating aspects like professional conduct, corruption, type of products bought, peers’ own scores and tax evasion. While this form of gamification is expected to have dire consequences on brands and consumers alike, the literature in that particular area of interest remains non-existent. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
A conceptual framework is suggested that highlights early on the risks and implications on brands and companies operating in that particular upcoming landscape.
Findings
The gamification of trust that the social credit system focuses on presents potential risks on brand and consumer relationships. This in turn will affect brand sustainability vis-à-vis the expected drastic changes in the Chinese business landscape. This study suggests the strategies to follow which will be of high interest to companies, consumers, as well as to the Chinese authorities during and after implementation stage.
Originality/value
This paper is amongst the first to discuss the potential effects of the Chinese social credit rating system on brands. The conceptual framework fills a sizeable gap in the literature and pioneers the discussion on potential dilemmas brands will be faced with within this new business landscape.
Foreign imaginaries of surveillance and informatization in China are commonly connected to notions of omnipresence, advanced technology, and coherent governance. In reality, however, the Chinese ...government’s efforts at the building of a digital society are permeated by confusion over the meaning of central edicts, interdepartmental and regional fragmentation, and overlap between different digital governance systems. This article interrogates the connection between two emerging governance infrastructures embedded in the Chinese Party-state’s latest informatization drive, the “National Civilized Cities Award” (NCCA) and the “Social Credit System Project” (SCSP) through a mixed methods approach. It combines data from an analysis of a recent NCCA assessment system government work manual, project websites, and findings from thirty qualitative video interviews with residents from twenty different cities in China to demonstrate that overlap between these projects is clear in terms of 1) criteria and indices measuring project development; 2) promoted virtues and individual behaviors; and 3) data sharing between systems. Local governments charged with the design and implementation of these initiatives frequently conflate their targets and objectives, prompting occasional reprimand from higher-level authorities. Public confusion about the meaning and purpose of both the NCCA and SCSP has meanwhile accompanied haphazard system development, demonstrating that the path towards a “digital society” in China is fraught and far from uncontested.
Social Credit was a constant presence in Canadian politics at the federal level from the mid-1930s until the late 1970s. Yet, the federal Social Credit Party has often been dismissed as the "lunatic ...fringe." This article will contextualize the federal Social Credit Party as part of the political right in the early Cold War. By analyzing the statements of several Social Credit MPs, as well as text from the Canadian Social Crediter, this article seeks to better understand the nature of conspiratorial thinking within Social Credit and how it was interwoven into broader, more "mainstream," postwar concerns, such as international Communism, the perceived decline of Britishness and Christianity, and the growing welfare state. The federal Social Credit Party pushed against the permeable barriers between "fringe" and "mainstream" by pairing conspiratorial thought with widespread concerns and operating within the center of political respectability in Canada.
The "informatisation" agenda of the CCP calls upon a wide range of ICTs to transform everything from manufacturing to social management. The umbrella of versatile Internet of Things technology ...therefore serves as a key component of policy makers' efforts to further digitalisation. This paper explores claims that Chinese ICT policy appropriates the Internet of Things to improve surveillance and social management in order to increase the governing capacity of the Chinese state apparatus. Finally, the paper discusses the emerging credit systems in the face of a shift towards digitalisation and reliance on data-driven analysis, and the increased attention given to cyber security that results from the Chinese state' reliance on technology.
Algorithms are playing an increasingly huge role becoming a big part of human lives. With the conceptualisation of algorithms as a socio-technical system, this study investigates algorithm ...initiatives in Korea and China in terms of the opportunities, risks, and challenges embedded in their development. This study analyses algorithm development and trends from a critical socio-technical lens: social, technological, cultural, and industrial phenomena that represent strategic interactions involving people, technology, and society and elicit sensitive legal, cultural, and ethical rhetoric issues. Despite rosy predictions and proactive drives, new risks related to privacy, transparency, and fairness emerge as critical concerns of the social ramifications of algorithms and of their impacts on the new information milieu. With these emerging issues, questions are raised on the ways to govern algorithms and to respond to potential outcomes that such a policy approach may have on society and industry. Both Korea and China will likely struggle with the social cost of AI as it challenges what it means to be fair, transparent, and accountable. The socio-political implications of algorithms are discussed to identify key issues as both countries progress toward an algorithm-based, AI-driven society.
The basic principles of SCS implementation are as follows: Formation of sustainable social structure and its operational management; Monitoring and correction of social transformations and behavior ...of the general population: transparency as a major factor in the life of an innovative society; Stimulating competition as a motivation for success. Due to the transparency of social life, different patterns of behavior in different conditions are published in the information space of the society. Accordingly, actionable life scenarios are made available to the general public, which is fulfilling an educational mission regarding adaptation mechanisms in an innovative society; the SCS system is a significant component of the national strategy of integration and consolidation of the Chinese innovation society; carrying out softpolicy foreign policy: The positive experience of the Chinese innovation society in implementing SCS is a prerequisite for expanding its area of application in Asian, African and Latin American countries, especially the countries participating in the One Belt One Road project. SCS covers all spheres of social life of the modern Chinese citizen, forms a sustainable form of accountability to the society for the content and flow of their daily activities, aspirations and preferences.
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