Social Credit System in China

Abstract

China's emerging nationwide social credit system is aimed at collecting and analyzing data on enterprises and individuals in order to assess the economic and social consequences of their activities, civic qualities, responsibility, and financial reliability. The preventive digital system for regulating public life looks like a continuation of China's social experiments in the second half of the 20th century. However, this time social engineering uses technical means that were previously unknown and devoid of the shortcomings of subjective assessment and application under the conditions of given parameters. Digitalization, therefore, has offered another tool for assessing social behavior — an additional control system based on strict mathematical principles and, importantly, in contrast to legal ones, operating in real time. In its regulatory function, it is comparable to moral norms, morality.