Beginning in 2014, China's government set itself the goal of developing a national consumer credit system. At first glance this might seem unexceptional: In the U.S. this function is filled by three private companies -- Transunion, Equifax, and Experian -- that each develop their own credit ratings of individuals. And indeed, China's credit monitoring system includes ratings of financial credit by the company Alipay, a Chinese financial company owned by the same people as the the online sales giant Alibaba, through its feature Sesame Credit. But the notion of "credit" in China is broader than just its financial meaning; the Chinese government therefore calls its approach a "social credit system" (shehui xinyong tixi), with the Chinese word for "credit" also having connotations of "faith," "credibility," or "honor." In its original intention, the Chinese credit system was designed to reward good behavior in all aspects of life and to punish bad or unacceptable behavior. In the words of the Chinese government, it is meant "to allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step." I'm interested in this system as a contemporary operationalization of behavioral principles, which seems to carry both potential benefits and important risks.
This system has been implemented in different ways and at different levels in pilot programs across the country, so currently there is no single "Chinese social credit system" to speak of. But in some example programs, citizens begin with 1000 points and receive deductions for rule violations (e.g., 5 points for a traffic ticket; a much larger drop for drunk driving). They can also improve their score with good deeds, such as donating to charity or volunteering. In another pilot program, rewarded behaviors include recycling or donating blood. A heroic act, exemplary business practices, or helping your family through tough times might raise your social credit score by as much as 30 points. The quality and type of friends one has online have been proposed as parts of the scoring system. But even though the system is called social credit, one important thing that it does not include is the opportunity for fellow citizens to upgrade or downgrade your score based on social media interactions; it is in that way less a measure of social reputation, and more a measure of business or community reputation. Advocates of this system suggest that the criteria for gaining or losing points are objective and documented, preferably supported by public records like financial documents or criminal convictions.
How well does this concept work in practice? Well, a recent analysis found that the reasons for losing points tend to be clearer than the reasons for gaining them: Failure to repay loans, court involvement, or public transportation rule violations were among the most commonly noted examples of penalty-incurring behaviors, while positive cases included more vague terms like "honesty" or "trustworthiness." These terms can be seen through the lens of Chinese belief in a "virtue cascade" in which personal honesty, self-discipline, and hard work lead people to be more helpful, to take care of others, to have a sense of communal responsibility, and to refuse rewards for good deeds. Nevertheless, the subjectivity of these moral concepts might make it easier for some people to receive rewards than others, and might make it harder for some people to come back from a deficit in their social credit.
The amount of points that a person holds can have important real-world consequences. As in the U.S., high credit scores are beneficial when buying a home or asking for a loan. But in some parts of China, a person with a high social credit score can benefit from free bicycle rentals, a stipend to pay winter heating costs, or a lower interest rate than their less-trustworthy peers. In some cases they might also receive better access to healthcare, educational opportunities, university positions, travel and leisure, good jobs, or even a match to a better marriage partner. People with high credit scores might have their names posted on a list outside of a library or other public building, alongside examples of positive behavior that the government is seeking to promote. On the negative side, penalties for a low social credit score can include not only difficulty getting a loan, but also worse seats on high-speed trains and air travel restrictions, with an estimated 6.15 million Chinese citizens having been banned from taking flights due to low social credit. These restrictions can be permanent: In the words of President Xi Jinping, China's policy is "once untrustworthy, always restricted." This quality of permanence can offend Western sensibilities. And in a step that strikes Westerners as particularly unfair, the children of Chinese citizens on a blacklist may become ineligible for attendance at higher-quality schools.
On one hand, of course, this is another frightening attempt at panopticon-style social control by an authoritarian nation with a history of human rights abuses. Some of the major concerns about China's social credit system include the possibility that it could be used to punish political dissidents, a blurry interface between state actors and less-accountable private companies, and the potential for predictive rather than just after-the-fact decision-making (a dystopian "Minority Report" scenario).
Despite these concerns, ordinary Chinese citizens are surprisingly positive about their government's attempts to develop a social credit system. Part of their support might come from the underlying cultural assumptions of Confucian philosophy, and its associated history of civil service exams dating from the Tang Dynasty in 618-907 AD. In the modern era, the Chinese Communist Party implemented "personnel dossiers" (dang'an) under Mao Zedong, which included not only personal information and job history, but also "family background, shortcomings, political activities, superior evaluations, and so on." The very idea of "privacy" may have a different meaning in China, with the term yinsi (privacy) carrying the connotation of "a shameful secret" and generally seen as something that one would not want to preserve because it goes against community values. Although the concept of privacy is evolving among young Chinese people due to the proliferation of the Internet, traditional Chinese views see transparency about people's behavior as a good thing rather than a bad one. Of course, people with high social credit scores receive direct personal benefits, and approval of the social credit system is in fact higher among those with better credit scores.
Another reason that many people in China seem to approve is because the social credit system works. In Wuhan in 2011, the local government developed paper-based "citizen morality files" to promote community-oriented behavior and to combat social ills. The targets for behavior change included not just gambling and drugs, but also slow government bureaucracy and ineffective action by law enforcement agencies! These behaviors are of interest to ordinary citizens, and improvement could conceivably lead to a society that is not only more homogenous but also more efficient and more just. People often cite ways in which the very existence of a social credit system benefits their community. One man in Rongcheng, for example, noted that "when we drive, now we always stop in front of crosswalks." This sort of pro-civic behavior is in line with traditional Chinese ethical systems, and is ultimately beneficial to all members of society. Other minor infractions that might carry a social credit penalty in some pilot programs include jaywalking, leaving false product reviews, cheating in online games, or failing to cancel a restaurant reservation that is not kept.
In China's system, a high level of transparency could promote positive social relationships within a community. It's not surprising that this aspect would appeal to people's Intuitive-level focus on interpersonal relationships, and to their instinctive identification with moral values as part of a social group. One might even speculate that as good behaviors are rewarded over time, people would intuitively become more moral as they internalized the civic virtues that their behavior outwardly expressed. In line with these interpretations, approval of the social credit system is higher among those with more privilege in Chinese society: people who are older, better-off, better-educated, urban, male, and perhaps surprisingly also those who have a more active online presence (which in an alternate interpretation might make them more concerned about privacy). People who approve of the system are more likely to say that it makes individuals and companies more accountable, that it makes companies abide by regulations, and that it improves quality of life for them and their community.
The very idea of a social credit system brings up images of "digital Big Brother" in freedom-worshiping American society, so it may be hard for us to consider the system's potential benefits. But they can be seen in practical terms via China's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in just 9 deaths per 100,000 people compared to the U.S.'s 299. China rapidly adapted its social credit mechanism to penalize people who over-charged for medical supplies, sold substandard medical goods, ate wild animal products that might contain the SARS-CoV-2 virus, or violated quarantine rules. Businesses were given tax relief and individuals who lost income were given extra time to repay their debts. All of these steps, which in the U.S. took multiple rounds of contentious legislation and were difficult to implement efficiently, were quickly rolled out to the Chinese public via "notices" similar to a technology platform changing its user agreement. Over the long term, some individuals are likely to have been harmed by blacklisting due to newly "unacceptable" behaviors introduced during the pandemic, and the Chinese government also has used information from the social credit system for propaganda purposes. Of particular concern is the fairness of the system to minority groups, such as the Uighur ethnic group which may be disproportionately the target of social credit deductions. The pandemic also revealed technical weaknesses such as a lack of inter-operability between local credit systems that evolved independently, and highlighted questions about which behaviors to punish, with examples of trivial offenses that include purchasing too much junk food or video games. Overall, China's current system (or more realistically, its current set of systems) seems to be better at rewarding and penalizing companies than it is in regulating the behavior of individuals, and it is more useful in the traditional realm of financial credit than in the more abstract realm of moral behavior.
The West is averse to centralized governmental regulation of private behavior -- indeed, that is one of the major reasons for our fragmented COVID-19 response -- but we are not immune to the temptation to use technology for surveillance and behavior modification. In our case the incentives are primarily commercial, which raises questions about its moral implications. Additionally, the practices of "doxing" (publishing a person’s address or other information for purposes of harassment) or "canceling" (ridiculing, verbally abusing, and ostracizing someone online because of their statements or actions) are examples of individuals trying to modify each other's behaviors through shame or intimidation. These non-governmental Western analogues to the social credit system are much more arbitrary and disproportionate than the Chinese system where "anything that affects your points needs to be backed up by official facts in official documents" -- a policy that sounds positively enlightened by comparison. Besides COVID-19, the West is struggling with a rise of antisocial behaviors like garbage, graffiti, and excrement in national parks; record numbers of pedestrian deaths despite fewer miles driven; and dramatic increases in patient violence against healthcare workers in the middle of a public health crisis. In the current U.S. context where community-oriented values have fallen to new lows, a little bit of prosocial behavior modification seems like it might be a good thing for governments to attempt. It is the level of trustworthiness and accountability of the government that attempts such a system, rather than the mechanics of the system itself, that will determine whether social credit incentives ultimately prove to be a dystopian nightmare or a beneficial force for the advancement of civilization.
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