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AbstractThis article examines citizen scoring in China's Social Credit Systems (SCSs). Focusing on 50 municipal cases that potentially cover 210 million population, we analyze how state actors quantify social and economic life into measurable and comparable metrics and discuss the implications of SCSs through the lens of social quantification. Our results illustrate that the SCSs are envisioned and designed as social quantification practices including two facets: a normative apparatus encouraging "good" citizens and social morality, and a regulative apparatus disciplining "deviant" behaviors and enforcing social management. We argue that the SCSs illustrate the significant shift in which state actors increasingly become data processors whereas citizens are reconfigured as datafied subjects that can be measured, compared, and governed. We suggest that the SCSs function as infrastructures of social quantification for enforcing social management, constructing differences, and nudging people towards desired behaviors defined by the state.

A variety of commercial and local government social credit systems (SCSs) are now being implemented in China in order to steer the behavior of Chinese individuals, businesses, social organizations, and government agencies. Previous research finds that these SCSs are employed by the Chinese state as "surveillance infrastructure" and for social management. This article focuses on a different angle: the public's opinion of SCSs. Based on a cross-regional survey, the study finds a surprisingly high degree of approval of SCSs across respondent groups. Interestingly, more socially advantaged citizens (wealthier, better-educated, and urban residents) show the strongest approval of SCSs, along with older people. While one might expect such knowledgeable citizens to be most concerned about the privacy implications of SCS, they instead appear to embrace SCSs because they interpret it through frames of benefit-generation and promoting honest dealings in society and the economy instead of privacy-violation.

A variety of social credit systems (SCSs) are being implemented in China in order to steer the behavior of Chinese individuals, businesses, social organizations, and government agencies. The government and industry architects of these SCSs claim that such systems will eventually lead to more honest and law‐abiding behavior, thus improving the quality of life among China's citizenry. However, very little is known about citizens' experience with and responses to different types of SCS initiatives. This article helps to address this gap. On the basis of a cross‐regional survey and interviews with SCS participants, we find that a surprisingly high share of respondents changed their behavior at least once, with changes concentrated in a few categories, including changing shopping behavior and following traffic regulations. Citizens who were part of a mandatory government‐run SCS pilot report altered their behavior in more ways than citizens who joined a commercial SCS. Interestingly, behavioral responses are driven mainly by material or symbolic (i.e., social recognition) motivations to influence scores in a positive way, with punitive elements playing less of a role. Finally, we find that SCSs currently reach only specific citizen groups due to variable responsiveness to the incentives provided by commercial and government‐run SCSs.

AbstractOver the past decade, China's central and municipal governments have consistently supported the development of social credit systems (SCSs). While research has highlighted the Chinese public's high approval and backing of SCSs, their engagement with these digital projects has not been fully explored. Based on 44 semi‐structured interviews, our research examines Chinese citizens' digital participation in government‐run SCSs at the local level. Our findings suggest that, despite perceiving SCSs as accepting and positive, most interviewees do not actively engage with local government‐run SCSs. Multiple factors can explain the gap between the high acceptance and low participation rates, including a lack of awareness regarding local SCSs, a perception that registering and maintaining a decent credit score requires major effort, various concerns involving data privacy and safety, algorithm accuracy and fairness, potential risks, unappealing benefits offered by SCSs, and the voluntary aspect of participating in local SCSs. Our research adds to the existing literature on digital governance in authoritarian contexts by explaining why Chinese citizens do not necessarily engage with state‐promoted digital projects.

China's Social Credit System (SCS) has been widely considered a centralized surveillance project, whereas recent research found multiple scoring systems co-existing in various fields at multiple administrative levels and in diverse forms. Despite the broadened view toward the complexity of SCS, these research projects continue to focus on SCS mainly as political and digital control mechanisms. Instead, this paper is interested in the social and cultural meanings of SCS constructed in the media, both at the national and local levels. Based on the analyses of news reports since the year 2003, when the term SCS was officially coined, this paper examines the historical narratives about SCS, including its rationales, stakeholders, and intended goals/tasks. It argues that the SCS construction has been a societal project anchored in a distinct moral orientation of financial credit. While credit systems are often used to classify consumers and financial subjects in Western contexts, the case of Chinese SCS shows that the moral dimension of financial credit scoring has enabled its spread into other non-financial domains. Also, the institutionalization of such moral standards is considered an effective approach to addressing various socio-economic and ethical issues that have long baffled economic development and social justice in China's reform era.

AbstractDigital data have become a valuable resource for autocratic governments seeking to influence societal behaviours. The rise of social credit systems in China has garnered a great deal of attention, with some even referring to them as 'Orwellian' surveillance systems. This study expands on previous research that has found surprisingly high levels of acceptance of social credit systems in China to the Southeast Asian region. Through an online opinion survey conducted in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, we discovered that citizens in these countries exhibit higher acceptance rates of social credit systems than opposition rates, although lower than those observed in China. Moreover, we find that acceptance rates would decline significantly if the technologies supporting these systems originated from China. By introducing an external technology acceptance model, we provide an explanation for these findings based on citizens' attitudes towards their domestic situation and their perceptions of China's potential benefits to their countries. Interestingly, most of the 'China Threat' perceptions do not translate into opposition against Chinese social credit system technologies, except for military risks. Instead, citizens' negative views are primarily influenced by specific technology‐related risks. These findings contribute to the existing literature on the acceptance of government‐run social credit systems and public perception in the context of international relations.