Yves here. All that surveillance capability has to be put to use. Some of the early social credit systems in the US amount to pre-crime, as in finding individuals guilty of behavior they have not yet engaged in. Admittedly, some scoring practices are not nuts. I am told that employers won’t even consider applicants that have a history of being litigious (outside divorce, housing court, and small claims court level disputes). These systems have free speech implications too which are a feature, not a bug. Yet some press remarks indicate that US job applicants with no social media footprint at all are seen as suspect.
By John P. Ruehl, an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C., and a world affairs correspondent for the Independent Media Institute. He is a contributor to several foreign affairs publications, and his book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December 2022. Produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute
By the late 2010s, China’s “social credit system” (SCS) was increasingly viewed as a notorious government effort to monitor personal behavior, shape public conduct, and control access to services. While the system traces back to the 2000s, it was officially expanded and formalized in 2014.
For example, in 2019, mixed martial arts fighter Xu Xiaodong made headlines when his social credit score was lowered “for insulting tai chi grandmaster Chen Xiaowang,” according to Quartz, which also led to him facing travel restrictions. In contrast, citizens in Rongcheng who earned the highest ratings of “AAA” through acts of charity and civic duty enjoyed perkslike discounted energy bills.
Personal reputation and risk scoring tools have also spread globally, particularly in the private sector. These systems go well beyond customer loyalty programs or service prioritization. Their growing social, legal, and economic consequences make it urgent to understand how these systems work and how automation will make them faster, less transparent, and more consequential.
In the U.S., tenant verification companies like RentGrow have mistakenly blacklisted renters for years, prompting a 2024 consumer protection lawsuit. Insurers are increasingly using non-financial data such as shopping habits and social media activity to build behavioral profiles and alter their services, pushing legal boundaries.
Ensuring trust, accountability, and good behavior in citizens and consumers is not inherently harmful when done by governments and companies, respectively. But when this exercise is powered by vast datasets and opaque surveillance tools, often involving scoring, these real-time behavior monitoring systems are prone to misuse.
China
China’s government-run SCS is the world’s most advanced, though it is yet to be completely implemented. Instead of isolated blacklists or points systems, it aims to collect and analyze a wide range of data, including finances, social behavior, and government records, to score citizens and implore them to follow state-approved norms.
The concept emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with local pilot programs starting in 2009. Rongcheng became an early test case by 2013, giving around 700,000 residents a baseline score of 1,000. Scores improved through actions like donating blood or volunteering, unlocking advantages like free medical checkups. Meanwhile, deductions were made for offences like tax evasion, which could cut off government benefits (though for many, the impact was minimal).
After Chinese authorities announced a national six-year development program in 2014, dozens of other “demonstration cities” emerged. Local governments often used small companies to help build the infrastructure and tech giants to scale it. In Hebei province, Tencent and WeChat help promote the nickname “Deadbeat Map” for an app that alerts users when someone with unpaid debt is nearby and encourages users to report them. Millions of other Chinese citizens have been blacklisted from flights and high-speed rail, or investing in real estate or other products due to low social credit scores, according to a 2019 Guardian article.
While Chinese companies helped build the state-run SCS, some were entrusted to create their own. Giants like Alibaba and Tencent, whose apps are deeply woven into daily life through e-commerce, media, banking, insurance, transportation, and other services, use reputation profiles to expand their influence over users further.
Alibaba’s Zhima Credit, launched in 2015, scores users on financial history, education and career, social connections, and charitable acts. Higher scores offered deposit-free rental apartments and expedited visas, yet its role shrank after 2018 when the government declined to renew private credit licenses. Tencent started its own social credit feature within its WeChat app in 2018 but suspended it within a day after public backlash, before rolling out another version in 2019.
Chinese public reaction to the individual SCS has been mixed. Criticism grew in several cities where programs penalized minor infractions, like missing dinner reservations. Central authorities called for the enforcement of penalties only through formal legal channels in 2019, and some cities switched to reward-only models.
Despite its image as a centralized system, China’s SCS remains incomplete. The government is wary of empowering private firms too much or provoking public retaliation, and a national rollout planned for 2020 was delayed by the pandemic and infrastructure gaps. Still, draft social credit laws were introduced in 2020 to unify standards, followed by another in 2022. In March 2025, new national guidelines called for fully integrating social credit into economic and social life, reflecting Beijing’s long-term efforts to bring the system fully online.
United States
While China’s government-run SCS is unique, American companies have quietly built a sprawling and mostly unregulated personal scoring counterpart. Less centralized than China’s, it is in some ways more sophisticated, as profit-driven firms have experimented with minimal oversight.
What began in the 1950s as a way to assess creditworthiness has grown into a massive industry tracking and scoring individual citizens’ behavior. Companies collect data from online records and digital footprints to assign scores or create blacklists. Some keep these ratings secret, while others sell or share them. Together, they have created profiling systems that increasingly determine access to jobs, homes, services, and more.
Insurance companies led the way in using non-financial data for risk scoring. Car insurers, for example, regularly purchase speed, braking, and location patterns from automakers to set premiums. Meanwhile, education platforms like EAB’s Navigate generate student risk scores based on dropout likelihood, engagement, and future success, shaping their lives long before graduation.
An investigation by nonprofit publication the Markup found “that the software, Navigate… used by more than 500 schools across the country, was disproportionately labeling Black and other minority students ‘high risk’—a practice experts said ends up pushing Black kids out of math and science into ‘easier’ majors.”
In public settings, tools like Alessa alert casinos when a visitor’s behavior triggers its proprietary “risk score.” Patronscan, the largest ID scanning firm in the U.S. (and active in Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand), allows a person to “either be flagged at a particular venue for up to five years, or flagged across the company’s entire network for up to one year,” according to a 2024 article in the Markup. The company faced a 2023 lawsuit for allegedly violating Illinois’s biometric privacy laws, but denied wrongdoing and settled the case in 2024. It also flags high spenders as “VIPs,” prompting venues to offer them preferential treatment.
Data analytics company LexisNexis, meanwhile, builds extensive risk profiles for landlords, employers, and insurers using public records, court filings, and third-party data, with limited avenues for individuals to dispute errors. Trulioo offers global identity and fraud risk assessments, with especially deep coverage in the U.S. due to the expansive datasets and permissive privacy laws in the country.
American citizens have been drawn into the scoring economy as both subjects and participants. Platforms like Uber and Airbnb rely on user ratings to determine who gets rides, accommodation, and work. Yelp and Google reviews offer public feedback, but can also be weaponized by review bombing, which has harmed innocent businesses and creators.
While not as advanced as Chinese government efforts, U.S. government scoring systems include the Automated Targeting System (ATS), used by the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection, to assign individual risk scores based on travel data, visa status, and airline records.
Additionally, police departments in Chicago and Los Angeles began trialing threat scores for citizens in the early 2010s, incorporating social networks, past police interactions, and location. These scores influenced policing strategies, including the use of force and proactive interventions. Despite officially ending the use of this system in Chicago and Los Angeles in 2019, predictive policing returned under new names and methods in both cities, often with the aid of private companies. The Federal Bureau of Prisons’ PATTERN Risk score, rolled out in 2022, meanwhile, assesses re-offense risk for prisoners.
The U.S. public reaction has grown increasingly wary of more open scoring systems. Backlash to personal ESG (environmental, social, and governance) scores and corporate reputation metrics led to their diminished use. In 2023, Utah’s House Business and Labor Committee approved HB281, a bill to prevent the state from creating or using systems that employ social credit scores to reward or punish citizens.
Though the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) of 1974 offers some federal protection for financial credit scoring, no comparable safeguards exist for behavioral scoring or digital blacklists. California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) grants basic data access and deletion rights to individuals, but opaque scoring systems have largely sidestepped it, and automated decisions do not need to be explained. The true number of such systems, both commercial and government-run, remains unknown, making them difficult to monitor or challenge.
Other Global Practices
Europe has attempted a more substantial regulatory approach to using personal data in scoring systems. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), implemented in 2016, provides a comparatively stronger legal foundation, requiring companies to disclose why personal scores may change, for example. However, enforcement is uneven, and loopholes remain.
Alongside private scoring tools, European governments have introduced their own social credit systems under more benign branding. In Italy, Rome and Bologna launched the smart citizen wallet in 2022, a pilot project rewarding citizens for eco-friendly behavior like recycling or using public transport. In the UK, “loyalty points” schemes in supermarkets monitor spending habits (as well as physical activity) for use in pilot health programs, an initiative introduced during Boris Johnson’s tenure as prime minister.
Social credit systems are more widely accepted in parts of East and Southeast Asia, where stronger state capacity, centralized digital infrastructure, and cultural norms make behavioral tracking less contested. In South Korea, a state-led “Green Credit,” encouraging sustainable living by rewarding eco-friendly actions, has been in place since 2011.
Private initiatives have also emerged in Asia, notably through super appsthat combine multiple services, building consumer profiles to control access and perks. Japan’s all-in-one app Line, widely used for communications, payments, and other utilities, raised eyebrows in 2019 after announcing plans to implement an AI-driven social scoring system to reward and restrict users based on their online and offline behavior. Given Line’s ubiquity, its experiment is a major step toward privately governed social credit structures.
Though promoted as tools to encourage good behavior and deter bad conduct, these systems amplify social pressure and push societies toward a digital panopticon—a state of constant surveillance driven by government and commercial incentives. These models will continue to mature and become more dangerous in the U.S. and other countries that lack adequate data protection. Without strict limits on surveillance by both governments and corporations, fears of AI misuse, algorithmic bias, false correlations, and harmful feedback loops will only grow as these scoring systems govern more of everyday life.
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I’ve lived here in China 22 years, and there is zero social credit scoring system. Nobody I know — and I know lots of people here — has ever, ever, ever had any consequence from jaywalking, spitting, driving badly, or anything else. This country is too free. It could use, at least, a damn cop pulling someone over for disobeying our green walk signal and charging into us.
Don’t believe me? Ask! It’s easy. Ask any Chinese friend with family back in Mainland China. Good luck finding one single report of anything like that. Zero, zero, zero system like this. Propaganda and fiction.
I rode my bike with my wife to a town nearby and stayed in a hotel there every week. Renewing my visa, they asked about all the stays, suggesting I was bringing something illegal back and forth. There are cameras every damn step of the journey. I told them to look. They couldn’t. I’m not even sure they’re hooked up to anything.
Wowsers, this must set a record for invalid argumentation and straw manning. We’ll get to the big point in due course, which we will document, that the Chinese government itself is regularly discussing in state media how it is extending and improving the social credit system. So taking the Chinese government at its word is propaganda? Are you nuts?
Second, you don’t rebut any of the points made in this article about China’s social credit system.
Third, the social credit system is….drumroll…to improve the extension of credit, and is not and never was intended to have anything to do with enforcement of traffic or (at least presently) non-credit/non-commercial matters.
Fourth, the post not once mentioned cameras or street-level surveillance, so you trying to attribute that to the post is a fabrication. It mentioned the early focus was on serious misconduct, later expanded to “financial history, education and career, social connections, and charitable acts.” Please tell me where driving fits in that list.
The program is run on a local basis and the article did mention in passing over-reach: Criticism grew in several cities where programs penalized minor infractions, like missing dinner reservations.” That seems to have been rolled back.
The article points out that for many infractors “the impact was minimal”. And it appears to be oriented mainly toward credit authorization. but on the perks side sometimes offers rewards.
Fifth, as to your claims regarding freedom, perhaps you were in a medically induced coma during Zero Covid? Mind you, we very much supported that initiative, we applauded China in being so bloody-minded about trying to limit the spread of Covid and the harm it does over time to its population. I am sure China is freer that the West in many key respects. But to say “too free” given the above is, as John Mearsheimer likes to say, is not a serious argument.
Sixth, the Chinese government, Global Times, which is an English-language extension of state media, made clear that the social credit system is about…CREDIT, repeatedly, such as in April 2025:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202504/1331426.shtml
And from March 2025:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202503/1331257.shtml
Finally, less than a half hour after you put up this post, which went into moderation, you accused us of deleting it, which is false. Our site Policies describe how moderation works, which is based on various pre-set rules, which means there was no decision taken, The Policies also state that comments that go into moderation will be normally be addressed in 24 hours, and we aspire to get to them and usually do much much faster than that. So attempting to threaten us at us that you were mistreated on your bogus assumptions and expecting a thinly-resourced site like ours to free a comment immediately, when even large mainstream media sites don’t to that, is utterly out of line.
Posting a comment is deemed acceptance of our Policies.
I trust you will find your happiness on the Internet elsewhere.
i’ll be a sort of devil’s advocate, here(the one with a spork).
ive heard about all this for a while…usually in breathless hysterics, with spittle, from faux newts types.
but ive never looked into it.
so this is the first time ive heard that all this “social credit” stuff is really all about actual Credit(debt).
not necessarily behavior modification on an orwellian/huxleyan scale…which is what the usual rhetorical hyperventilating would lead one to believe….which is where i reckon that guy^^^ is perhaps coming from.
so, as someone who habitually avoids debt…no credit cards, no mortgage…not even a checkbook…how does any of the planned social credit things in the usa/corpseworld effect me?
based on the info in this article, it would seem to be not at all.
on the other hand, i accidentally ran a red light in brady, texas last month(a really, really fast yellow, which seems pretty sketch, to me, anyway)..and am sure the camera, if functioning, caught me.
ive also accidentally got on a toll road, long ago…due to poor signage(same sketch)…and while reading this, and since i’m due to go to the coast in july…i was reminded of the 12 different wierd cameras at the gatehouse to the National Seashore, there at North Padre Island…when i was last there, some 10 or more years ago, i just waved at Homeland Security.
and…all the internet surveillance should be well known by now. Local sheriff’s offc has someone monitoring the social media of the local high school set so they know ehen and where the big ragers are, so they can lurk and bust.
and i myself have been on a no fly list, for raging at my employees(congress).
but all that doesnt sound like what we’re talking about, here.
all that said, i get the confusion of tongues…and how one scary sounding thing might bleed into another scary sounding thing in the mind of an harried citizen.
1. As you can see from the MANY extracts from Global Times (the English language sister of People’s Daily), which includes quotes from members of the central bank, China is calling it a social credit system. This is not a Western invention. This is China’s term of art.
A March 2025 article in Global Times said it covers. 1.1 billion individuals.
2. It is a credit reporting system. As we also show below, one local government in 2019 included parking violations, so there were questions then (PER GLOBAL TIMES) as to how much it would be extended to include personal behavior.
If I have correctly understood what it is about and had to summarize the confusion that surrounds that system, I would say that in Western countries, the term is parsed as “(social-credit) score”, while in China it means “social (credit-score)”.
I don’t know, Ms Yves. Chinese people I know when asked about the Social Credit System just laughed, as if it didn’t exist or was so transparent as to be unremarkable.
It’s for borrowing. Have they had what amounts to a credit report pulled when (if) they got a mortgage to buy property? That is how it comes in. The term of art in Chinese is apparently a bit different despite Global Times repeatedly calling it a “social credit system”.
Sorry if I don’t get the issue but, even on here/NC back in the day I thought FICO was unpacked. Be living next door, even in a good neighborhood, too others with a black spot on ones rating and it would be judged as a credit risk through no fault of theirs.
I have heaps of this old stuff archived, public MSM stories, not that the GFC exposed so much more.
Guess the question boils down to how and why some get better credit terms and others not … which then comes down to balance sheet flows and how it effects society at large.
No, FICO or Fair Issac Corporation score was the result of anti-discrimination legislation to prevent precisely that practice. I am not up on the current parameters, but for instance having a savings account in addition to a checking account gives you a higher score, as did (back in the day) a landline as opposed to a cell. Oddly you get a LOWER score if you have no debt (save credit card balances paid off every month) than if you have a regular obligation like a mortgage or car loan and pay on time.
Agree on the lower score aspect, yet still hold the line on how credit rating, in or out of house, used personal information noted above in determining scores.
Without checking my archives the article was in the LA times around post GFC, same as the one about a LA times tax/financial journalist had a moment with BofA. Wild non conformist internal policy to fed reg and he when up the food chain, even got a face to face with the LA CEO at the end of it. Won the day but, how many have both the knowledge and social platforms to achieve that result.
Me and you do … not so much the others … sigh …
Again:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202504/1331426.shtml
That is an average of 6 credit reports having been accessed per person.
It does exist. It also seems statistically impossible that none of the people you know has never had a credit report ordered on them.
It appears that unlike the US, the individual does not have to authorize the credit report being accessed.
At the risk of compounding my too limited ability to “talk lay”, here is an insight into why any numerical score given to reflect “social creditworthines” is garbage.
For authorities/researchers to do things like “take average” etc, the scores they are given (in this case by any institution that gives you a “loyalty score” on a [0,5] scale MUST have certain mathematical properties. In short, the zero must be a real zero, 4.5 must reflect EXACTLY TWICE the value of 2.25, the difference between 5 and 3 must be equal to that between 4 and 2. In short, it MUST be a ratio scale, the “strongest” type of scale in mathematics. Interval scales are the next level down, where differences are meaningful but the zero is arbitrary and isn’t linked to a real thing (*cough* Fahrenheit*cough*).
If you are taking averages across two institutions that don’t both conform to this, then you are doing the “let’s take the average of an apple and an orange thing”. You can’t do maths on numbers that are incommensurate. Yet who is checking these companies to ensure that the customer given a 4 “did the right thing” twice as often as the customer who got a 2?
I am unaware of a single study in mathematics where human-generated numbers are ratio scaled but I’m happy to be given a counter-example. When I recently referred to the rejection of “conjoint analysis” is was because people like McFadden knew that use of these numbers was garbage. Observe what people DO and suppplement with well-designed surveys. Don’t just take a number based on what they say, or a number from a shop-keeper. Indeed I’m sceptical as to whether we can EVER prove the mathematical properties of “numbers given by humans” unless we find easy ways to scan them via MRI as they give the numbers since the numbers are “poor representations of an internal utility scale” – that same utility scale that economists bandy around so furiously.
Once upon on a time on my Asia-Pacific travels I found it hilarious to see how many hotels had no floor 4. Then I realised “wait a minute, how many US hotels have no floor 13?” Yep, same phenomenon. And using these numbers to determine key things like whether you get a house etc is very very worrying.
For those interested in the history of why certain advertisers and markets threw away numerical scoring, I have to be careful. Certain companies in the 1980s specialised in “conjoint analysis”: they asked you to rate a TV on a 0 to 5 scale. They then used linear regression models to essentially compare TVs, compare “how much of the overall score was attributable to TV screen size” etc. Then some awkward people like my former mentor came along and asked “do you use scores in buying a TV?”. Cue awkward silence. Then we moved to a model that actually tried to model what humans actually do: make a discrete choice: choose THIS TV from this set of different TVs. It sidestepped the problems of no longer having “numbers” but introduced new ones, which to this day are still being investigated.
The “Conjoint” companies had a branding problem. They couldn’t say “all our existing stuff using conjoint analysis was garbage and we’re moving to discrete choice models”. So they invented terms to try to bridge the gap. Cue a schism between North America and the rest of the world to this day. The rest of the world says “no thank you, we want conjoint consigned to the dustbin of history” but we’re not in control. Wonder what the Chinese term best translates as? Since NOBODY I am still in contact with who knows this stuff from Europe or Asia-Pacific wants to go to the major “conjoint” conferences in USA these days I am petty enough to admit to schaudenfraude ;-)
There are some factual disputes regarding China’s social credit system. The Guardian claimed that millions are banned from trains or planes, but others have said the ban only requires someone with uncollected debts to select the lowest fare. The article note Central authorities preference for penalties to be assessed through formal legal channels. As an aside, it would be nice if I felt that I could trust Western MSM’s assertions about China.
Also, while the article above provides details on the background and infrastructure of China’s purported social credit system, some of the items such as encouraging volunteering seem benign. That obviously can change with the flip of a switch as a pervasive infrastructure is built out.
I would also add that it seems more benign than the social credit system in force in the US with respect to many activities associated with respect to a certain country in the Middle East.
I find it interesting that the early comments on this post straw man it. What the Guardian said elsewhere is not germane to the discussion above. Why do you bring in something the author never said?
As much as I think the effort of the US officialdom to depict critics of Israel as anti-Zionist is heinous, to say anything like credit score retribution is occurring is ludicrous. Just look at all the prominent and loud criticism on YouTube and podcasts. Have any of them had loans denied or credit cards cancelled? The government had been vicious in campus-related crackdowns, but the Trump Administration declared “liberals” on campuses as the enemy (see JD Vance long form on this) and Israel has proven a very good vector for advancing that agenda.
This slip-shod reasoning is very depressing and looks like tribalism rather than a good faith interest in getting a better approximation of what is happening.
Indeed. It is perfectly possible to criticise all this guff on mathematical grounds…..you do NOT need to resort to “Pro this country” or “anti that country”. I really don’t care about countries when it comes purely to the mechanics. I wanna use outcomes where the maths works…..which is not to say I do not care about the politics, it’s just that I am able to separate the politics from the maths.
When you do things that deliberately mix the two, is it any wonder that a lot of the population smell a rat and get antsy (get tribalistic as you say). Very depressing.
The fact is, if we were SERIOUS about some sort of social credit system we’re largely there in our ability to do it. The trouble is, we’re using blatantly awful variables to give a pseudo social credit score….and these can be VERY VERY wrong and in the hands of “clever” people can be manipulated to make some people “insiders” and others “outsiders”. It’s like that episode of Black Mirror based on social credit scores. Scary times.
I do not know anything about China’s social credit—except China hawks splurge about it and China-neutral pundits say “it’s complicated,”
OP’s own link says, “There will not be a unified “Social Credit Score” that rates individual behaviour. An all-encompassing scoring system ……”
I 100% will not be surprised if the West, particularly continental EU, out-panoptican’s China
The Chinese government is in fact extremely proud of its social credit system, so you are really off base in depicting discussion of it as an attack on China. I will repeat a quote from Global Times in April that I posted above in a very long reply:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202504/1331426.shtml
I know there is virtually NO way to get at this but I’d be really interested to know how they get at an individual’s creditworthiness.
If it is “towards the mathematically OK” end of the scale then it’ll recognise their “sucesses” and “failures” as discrete outcomes with approporiate modelling. If it is “towards the suss end” then it’ll be an average of numerical scores given by people who do not use a ratio scale and can be manipulated, much like in the west in certain areas of the internet you see debates about whether Rotten Tomatoes scores are in any way good.
I simply don’t know enough to judge. Someone like Pettis might have insights but I don’t. I can simply “alert people to where the score can go really wrong and potentially cause a person to appear much more or much less creditworthy than they really are”. If and only if, the CCP is using discrete outcomes, and has being attending certain western conferences on discrte choices for past 20 years, it’s entirely possible that this “scale” is (whilst not correct) not TOO far wrong……..colour me curious
I’m not sure that Beijing is too concerned with the epistemological robustness of the score. I’ve no doubt that if we were to talk to those implementing it, they’d complain loudly about bosses and politicians asking for unrealistic outcomes and constant fudges and patches. Its as much a tool of intimidation as it is a reasoned attempt to identify anti-social elements. Its randomness and lack of an opaque scoring system (or opportunity to appeal) is part of the design. It is, as Yves would say, a feature not a bug.
Sadly, you are probably entirely true……the opaqueness is its stength and ability to be used by govt.
If they used discrete choice models etc then outside agencies could check up on them.
This way it is opaque.
Agreed. and the fact most relatively informed people on a site like NC can’t understand the mean-variance confound gives additional defence to the CCP.
If the average person in the west can’t get it then it’s p!ss easy to show whatever the hell we want (as Xi would think).
We failed. All because we never did vaguely advanced mathematics. So we can’t complain. The Chinese students “got” the confound straight away. Not opinion. Fact based on my teaching.
Of course, the cohort of Chinese students you taught compared to the others might itself be a confounding variable (joking!).
I can’t say I’ve dug too deeply into the social credit system – as you can see from the comments here it is widely misunderstood, not helped by ambiguity both in Beijing statements about it and additional issues caused by translations from mandarin (a whole other issue). But to deny its existence or fundamental importance to how Beijing wishes to control its population is ridiculous and western leftist commentators who try to maintain it doesn’t exist are undermining their own credibility.
It is unquestionably a serious attempt by Beijing (they openly discuss it – they are proud of it) to increase control over the population – a more up to date version of the constant public exhortations to be good citizens much favoured by Maoists. And it’s not necessarily unpopular with a lot of Chinese people, in that most people quite like living in a society where order is valued over ‘liberty’ (however you define it). In my visits to China over the past 30 years or so one clear trend is that there is a lot less overt crime and disorder (China always claimed to have very low crime, which was very obviously untrue to anyone who visited in the ’90’s), and in general things feel more orderly and safer. Even driving on the roads has gotten (marginally) less lunatic than it used to be. People will put up with a lot of loss of ‘freedom’ if they think that their cities are safer and nicer.
Agreed on all counts. I’m no pan-Asian expert but have visited some countries there and gleaned a lot of “stuff we don’t usually say to foreigners” when I got to be friends with Chinese etc in Sydney” plus BFF is very very senior in Japanese society.
It all accords with first hand accounts you have had. One of the most worrying texts I ever got here when back in the uk came from 2nd gen Han guy born and bred here (with pronounced regional accent to his local area here) who announced he would no longer try to apologise for China but tell people we should be more like them. Once upon a time I’d be worried. Now I think “yep probably for the best”. Things can’t get get worse FFS. (Visit Nottm if you wish to argue this).
(Not trying double post…..I tried to edit typos but got timed out so dunno if this ever got to Nc server)
The ‘second generation’ thing is real with lots of communities. I remember a Turkish women talking with horror about meeting her German relatives and discovering that her young female cousins were insisting on headscarves.
Having Irish American relatives taught me a long time ago that the very last people you should ask about a countries politics are its diaspora, especially those a generation or two removed.
(i don’tmean this as a criticism or praise)…
if we lived in a society with density that makes central London look like the Scottish Hignlands, and a history of repeated cycles of col.apse of powerful social orders into “Mad Max”warlordism, we would value order higher too
*Sigh*
You are conflating China with Hong Kong.
China ranks #83 in population density.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density
To pick some familiar examples, Switzerland (#67) and Italy (#72)are higher density
Indeed. Chinese cities have similar densities to European cities, around 5-10,000 per sq. km. The big crammed cities of Africa and Asia (Manila or Jakarta for example), are 2 or 3 times this much. Hong Kong, and Macau for obvious historical reasons is an outlier on the Chinese mainland.
Modern Chinese cities are generally high rise, but thats not the same as high density. They tend to be quite scattered with an enormous amount of land given up to highways and parking. Much of this is driven by very rigid development codes on highway width. sunlight and open space (the latter almost inevitably becoming parking lots). Chinese zoning rules have tended to prevent the type of densification of inner areas that are a feature of the more flexible Japanese system.
For a contrary view, different from this author, see this 25 minute video from Brian Berletic on the so called Chinese Social Credit System. His discussion is well documented and he shows that the “system” is piecemeal, voluntary and points out that there is no centralized social score system in China.
The video is here: China’s “Social Credit Score System” – Fact or Fiction?
On another note, being curious about the author, I clicked the link to his book “Budget Superpower” but was only sent to the publisher, not the specific book. I was struck by the title of the book comparing Russia’s economy as being “smaller” than Texas’. According to the IMF, Texas is essentially on par with Russian GDP, Texas = 2.4T and Russia = 2.37T. And the Visual Capitalist Has Russian PPP at 6.9 T, 4th largest in the world.
So this seems a bit debatable. I’ll look for his book, it sounds interesting.
*Sigh* Yet another straw manning of the piece. Did you actually read it or are you triggered by any English language article that talks about China’s social credit system? I am gobsmacked by the reactions that seriously misrepresent article. The post makes clear that there has been substantial experimentation and local variation.
And Berletic is contradicted by the Chinese government. Must I quote this section from Global Times yet again? From 2021:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202101/1213955.shtml
This was ALWAYS a centrally driven scheme even though developed across different platforms. There are plenty of articles on how the central government has been setting standards, such as in correcting records after someone with a bad credit event has cured the problem.
And 2025:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202504/1331426.shtml
So the aim is to integrate the platforms and extend them.
The sources of both articles from the Global Times is the People’s Bank of China (PBOC/PBC). The “Social Credit System” seems to be a misnomer of “financial credit system”.
Global Times is an English language site, seen as a Chinese government organ, and so they are doing the translation from Chinese. In other words, this is the English expression the Chinese government has chosen. Global Times is under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party’s main newspaper, the People’s Daily.
Jeremy Daum, a Senior Research Scholar in Law and Senior Fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center Yale University, has blogged about this extensively for 7 or 8 years, debunking most of the BS.
That this did not show up on the radar before posting is symptomatic of a much larger problem.
Here is a link to some of Daum’s principal posts on the subject.
https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/en/social-credit-articles/
This comment fall well below the critical thinking standards expected here. It is what we call a drive by shooting.
You need to debunk the post if you object to it. That means citing particular points you deem to be inaccurate and demonstrating why.
Merely citing a source and not even establishing whether what it says is different than what the post says is lame.
And as important, argument from authority is a logical fallacy. You need to offer additional evidence if you intend to go this route.
“China’s government-run SCS” suggests it’s being used everywhere, is prevalent, inescapable, nationally enforced, all citizens are being tracked against their will.
On the other hand the same article also says it’s only been rolled out to a limited number of demonstration cities. Suggesting it may be a prototype, for demonstration, and being tested. Also, evolving, subject to feedback and change/adjustment/refinement.
And the article also says some of those demonstration cities rejected it, opted for other systems, suggesting it was optional, thus not nationally enforced, and also that not all citizens are being tracked. And suggests it’s not working the way we might think a “government-run nationally centralized system” might work.
In the Rongcheng version it appears to be something of a point system, thus if I get caught shoplifting I might lose points, which I can then recover by doing a series of good deeds. It doesn’t appear as if that particular point system is integrated with other kinds of scoring systems in use.
So, for example, our tendency is to think of a centralized pointing system as if I default on my mortgage I’m going to lose 1000 points, if convicted of shoplifting, maybe 500 points, if I neglect a payment, another 500 points, if I jaywalk, 50 points, if I yell at my neighbour, 25 points, and my points are appearing over my head on all the surveillance cameras, are coming up when I use my banking card, rent an apartment or renew my driver’s license. And no matter where I am in the country, I can’t escape my score, everyone can see it. And there would be a list or table somewhere of how many demerit points each deed or misdeed is worth.
That doesn’t seem to be how it actually works, it seems to something very specific, and internal to, the federal government, the courts and Peoples Bank of China. Thus, if you are not one of these three, you don’t see the score? So private corporations cannot see the score? Therefore, the employees at the corner store and the gas station can’t see my score? And where is the table or list of demerit points associated with which deeds/misdeeds (or did I miss that in the multiple levels of links cited)?
In which case, isn’t it almost identical to whatever any Western government would have in place, for, say, checking to see if you’ve defaulted on a loan, have a criminal record, or have a low credit score?
How exactly is my social credit score showing up and to whom? Is there a screen on a monitor and does it have a blinking red number? For example, we know if you’re on the no fly list you’re a name on a list, probably with your SSN, and the airlines can see it.
And the average landlord can’t see my score? If corner stores and landlords can see my score, how? Is there an app for it? Is the app querying a central database?
Drilling down three layers into the links, from this article to the Orcasia.org link, from there to the Merics.org document, we find this section:
Thus, we’ve established there is no central database, no central repository, and therefore there cannot be an app, or a hook for an app, which can query a database and show a blinking red number above your mug shot.
So in other words, they’re reallyreally having to hunt for this system, looking for evidence of it, and it’s not very clear where it intersects with and manifests in peoples daily lives.
I think what might be helpful is understanding exactly how the Chinese “centralized” SCS is working, and I don’t think we have that understanding yet.
Whereas the other Chinese initiatives described in the article are privately owned, TenCent, WeChat, Alibaba, and therefore closer in similarity to the various private US initiatives described in the US paragraphs of the article, which are a mix of redlists, blacklists, pilot programs across the private sector.
This might also explain the confusion expressed in the first comment.
I think the Western horror of the Chinese SCS experiment is to do with capitalist fear that exploitation and treating others poorly might be socially forbidden, might have consequences. A Capitalist Karen or a Ken would be utterly horrified by such a system.
Probably also the fact it seems less forgiving – have a temper tantrum or get caught shoplifting once and your life is ended, you won’t recover from your mistake, there isn’t a way to undo it. But again, how is this different from social media and criminal records which also follow you to the end of your days?
Meanwhile, our horror at the Western capitalist versions of the SCS stems from lack of transparency or due process, the possibility of being wrongly categorized or criminalized based on something you may or may not have done, more likely not, and also the invasion of and disrespect for privacy aspect which is guaranteed so long as private corporations are handling this data. Not that Western governments respect citizen privacy if they’re sharing data with private corporations like, say, Palantir.
Did you read the excerpts from Global Times? I suggest you look to official sources rather than speculate.
Who is “China” in this 2019 article, for instance, if not the government?
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1158119.shtml
The reason for the apparent confusion is that this seems to be the Chinese version of a public-private partnership. From a different 2019 article (emphasis mine):
I don’t see how you can deny that this is a government initiative in light of this and many other statements like that, even if the government is providing guidance and directives as opposed to direct administration.
Similarly in 2025:
I work in fintech, so this is just the way my brain (somewhat) works:
“Oh, there’s a system? I love systems! 1) What does the front-end (application user) interface look like, do we have any screenshots or at least mockups, or do we have descriptions of what that might look like? 2) Who uses the interface, who is the front-end user? What is their role? What are they seeing, what are they adding, modifying or deleting? Are there controls in place, procedures, does a change need to be reviewed, validated? Are there audits? Security procedures? 3) What does the back-end system/database look like, what data is it storing, how much data, where, how is the data structured, how to ensure data integrity? 4) What connects the two, how does the front-end talk to the back-end? How to ensure uptime, connectivity? 5) What database system is being used? 6) What language was the interface coded in, or what vendor platform does it sit on?”
This seems to be a system that nobody has seen and we don’t really know how it works, probably because it appears to still be under construction, but also the public/private partnership you mention is probably several different things, rather than a centralized system.
So I think there is a HUGE amount of speculation about something vague that appears to still be under construction and isn’t really any one particular thing, could be various things, and at least one of them might be a scoring system of some kind, but maybe not.
It’s not nonexistent, obviously, but where and how does it intersect with the everyday? How does it work, or how will it manifest in reality?
If I could speculate, I think they probably got as far as “ok, so how many points should we deduct for jaywalking?” and the whole thing stalled right there, where it’s probably still stuck. And if it’s actually moving forward, someone somewhere is going to publish answers to all of the questions I had above, plus a list of which social behaviours add/subtract which number of points.
And, actually, I have the right, by Canadian law, to request the government share with me whatever data they’ve collected about me – so that’s another way I might know a system exists and how it might work, what data is being collected. I also have the legal right for my data to be accurate. China being communist, like Canada, do they have similar laws, I wonder?
Is that 2019 article from Global Times genuine? The source link is broken.
Lordie. You are suggesting I fabricated the text? The link opens for me. Here is the top of the page showing the link.
No. What I meant was that if you click “BUSINESS”, it will inform you that the link is not found.
yeah.
i am still confused as to what exactly we’re trying to talk about,lol.
i mean, i cannot legally serve on a jury…because of one $19 bounced check, 30+ years ago, shows up on my sheet as “THEFT!!!”.
all the usians freaking out about whatever china is doing need to take a look under the carpet of our own country,lol.
i get Yves’ frustration with us, though…but i also get the confusion that seems to abound around this topic.
I dont read Chinese, after all…and most of the things ive seen, as ive said, above, are breathless crazytown from antiChina people who have an agenda.
15years ago, one might consult google, or wikipedia, or something…but now?
lol.
we’re in ontological crises mode, now…
The issue is the apparent pervasive reading comprehension fail. I have seen this on other topics, such as therapeutic uses of mRNA. Readers react as if they are triggered. They see “mRNA” or “social credit score” and write what LOOK like objections to the article but in fact do not relate to what the article said. They project an argument on to the article that it never made. They even double down when challenged on PRECISELY that basis.
It would be one thing to say, “This discussion of social credit scores reminds me of XYZ,” as in acknowledge that the points to be made are not in response to what the article said, but the topic area generally. But that isn’t what’s happening.
No, this is not a drive by shooting.
In academia, of which I am part, the burden is on the researcher when advancing an argument to consult all of the relevant sources in what is called a literature review. If the researcher neglects or overlooks sources, it is on them, not on those who point out the lacuna.
This exchange between Jeremy Daum and Kaiser Kuo from 2022 is a rebuttal of some of the ideas cited in your post that repeat propaganda lines pushed by notorious think tanks like MERICS (source for the first hyperlink in your post):
Jeremy [Daum]: This is to me, the ultimate example of misinformation, where people who don’t have opinions on China fully believe that there is a social credit score happening to all citizens in China.
Kaiser [Kuo]: So, let’s clear on this. I mean, there is a Social Credit System. There are pilot programs in multiple areas that have something that is without a policy described as a Social Credit System. So, what is it and what is it not, in where we are today in January 2022? What is its reality?
Jeremy: Yeah, the Social Credit System is real, but when I describe it to people, they’ll say, “Well, so you’re saying the Social Credit System isn’t real?” Because they have such a firm notion of what that phrase means.
Kaiser: Right.
Jeremy: What it really is, is sort of a regulatory credit check system. It’s primarily aimed at businesses, not at individuals. And social credit is pretty routinely defined as a measure of people’s compliance with laws and legal obligations. So, it’s not a holistic measure of all your behavior. It’s not an algorithmic formulation based on what you did online, what you bought, who your friends are, what you said, what you posted about. It measures whether or not you’ve received administrative punishments, criminal punishments, whether you’ve applied for permits, or a registered a business, things like this.
So, most of the information going into it is what they call public credit information, which is information created or collected by the government in the course of its normal business. So that’s to say that the creation of the idea of the Social Credit System didn’t involve collecting much more information.
What it did involve was sharing information between regulatory agencies, and they’re now making it so that if you violated say a food safety law… In the past, you might… The food safety regulators would know that that had happened, but it’s now available for the public to see in most cases. And also, other regulatory agencies will see this.
Asserting that your original comment was not a drive by shooting does not change its status.
This comment, despite containing informative detail, is an example of bad faith argumentation.
First, you engage in wild invention by saying the author should have made a literature review. This is a finance and economics website. We do commentary and journalism, not academic research. Please go to the front page of any reputable news outlet and show that any, let alone most, undertook a literature review.
Second, you still have still not identified any statement in the article as inaccurate. You criticize merely a link. Help me.
Third, you use the long quote to construct a straw man rather than address the piece. Since you have yet to present any bona fide criticism except the link you don’t like and your bogus literature review demand, I have to infer a critique from your selected quote. Your beef seems to be calling China’s social credit system a social credit system because “social credit system” has come to have a lot of baggage attached to it. I have demonstrated that this is the term China itself has chosen to use to describe this program in its English language communications for many years and is still doing so in 2025.
Fourth, your extract is contradicted by Global Times, making it very hard to accept your claim that Jerry Daum is an authoritative source. It says, “There are pilot programs in multiple areas that have something that is without a policy described as a Social Credit System.” The quotes I have provided above show Global Times describing a policy, for instance, the 23 point policy measures just published: https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202503/1331257.shtml
Daum also claims the policy is not aimed at individuals. Pray tell, how does he explain the 2019 Global Times headline, “Social credit system to set market access limit for dishonest individuals, firms” and its first sentence, which explicitly depicts the central government as driving the initiative:
Similarly, you do not deny the apparently famous account in the opener about the mixed martial arts fighter. Global Times reported in 2019 in City targets jaywalking with detailed social credit system on the social credit system being extended by some local authorities to include jaywalking (this explains the reference to jaywalking in the first comment, that had eluded me. Also see the section I boldfaced in its opening section:
And to repeat a quote from a 2025 Global Times article:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202504/1331426.shtml
Since Google searches say that there are fewer than 1 billion adults in China, the system looks as if it encompasses pretty much every independent person and even some dependents (teens?).
And I am to take this conversation as authoritative in light of VERY easily verified errors? It may be a “herding cats” level policy to converge various smaller initiatives, but there IS a policy.
Fifth, where pray tell is Daum’s literature review? He appears to have ignored what the Chinese government itself is saying about the program, per the descriptions we found in Global Times, their English organ. The reason I have relied on it so heavily is, aside from it being easily accessible, it that or the underlying Chinese accounts in Xinhua and other official news sources should be first stop information shopping. It sets forth what Chinese officials want an international audience to know about the Social Credit System, which they repeatedly have called “Social Credit System” in their articles.
Since I work for a living (in a different time zone) and don’t have a lot of time to spend on free labor for somebody else’s website (a website to which I make an annual contribution, I might add), I cannot take the time out of my busy work schedule to respond point by point. (I’m currently working under a tight deadline to complete a book manuscript by the end of the month). In lieu of that impossible time drain, perhaps it will be instructive, in an exemplary sense, if I were to address the claims advanced in paragraph 2 of Mr. Ruehl’s article, which reads:
For example, in 2019, mixed martial arts fighter Xu Xiaodong made headlines when his social credit score was lowered “for insulting tai chi grandmaster Chen Xiaowang,” according to Quartz, which also led to him facing travel restrictions. In contrast, citizens in Rongcheng who earned the highest ratings of “AAA” through acts of charity and civic duty enjoyed perkslike discounted energy bills.
The claim in paragraph 2 that Xu Xiaodong had his “social credit score…lowered” is based on a report in Quartz from May 25, 2019. The 2019 Quartz report does indeed state, “His social credit score was lowered,” but the hyperlink to which this claim is linked leads to a sensationalist article, also published in Quartz, that introduces a pilot plan developed (and later abandoned) by Tencent, in which Xu Xiaodong is not mentioned (not mentioned because the hyperlink article dates from 2017, two years before Xu Xiaodong was sanctioned by a Chinese court). In fact, the hyperlink in the 2019 Quartz article mentioning Xu Xiaodong is simply associated with the terms “social credit score.” In other words, the 2019 Quartz report provides no source to back up its claims. Oh well.
The Traditional Sinogram Chinese Wikipedia entry for Xu Xiaodong includes a section on the incident, but there is no mention of “social credit score.” Instead, what is mentioned is that Xu Xiaodong was sentenced by a Chinese court for defamation and then, after refusing to pay compensation, was further indicted for judgment default. The punishment required payment of an indemnity to the wronged party and Xu’s name was added to the “List of Dishonest Judgment Defaulters” issued by the People’s Court. While relevant Provisions of the Supreme People’s Court on Issuing the Information on the List of Dishonest Judgment Defaulters from 2017 does include a reference to “social credit score,” the reference itself is aspirational at best and in any case not linked to any extant institution, unlike the List of Dishonest Judgment Defaulters. Significantly, the Wiki entry provides two Chinese language sources for the punishment meted out to Xu. One is a Sina.cn repost of a short report from 2019 (the year in which Xu was arraigned) in the Beijing Youth Daily; the other is a report from two years later, i.e., 2021, in the Liberty Times News, a notoriously anti-China/pro-independence news site in Taiwan that specializes in “yellow” journalism about China – both in the sense of shady sensationalism and in the sense of Yellow Peril racism. Unsurprisingly, while the Beijing report includes an accurate reference to the “List of Dishonest Judgment Debtors,” the report in the Taiwanese media includes an inaccurate reference to “social credit score,” advancing the spurious claim that Mr. Xu’s “credit score” was lowered to “D rank.” Clearly, there is a political agenda at work here.
As I am not able to access the paywalled SCMP, I cannot evaluate the accuracy of the reporting in the article that is the object of a hyperlink at the end of paragraph 2, about “citizens of Rongcheng.” What I can evaluate, however, is the relevance of the “contrast” drawn by Mr. Ruehl, who cites the example of Rongcheng as a relevant point of reference for understanding the fate of Mr. Xu. The contrast is highly misleading. Rongcheng was one of 28 medium and small (by PRC standards) pilot test cities across the nation. The pilot programs are run by the cities themselves and there is no standardization or centralization. They feature the composition of Lists that are overwhelmingly focused on judgment defaulters, like Mr. Xu. The contrast drawn by Mr. Ruehl is an apples to oranges comparison and for that reason must be judged illegitimate.
I trust that an analysis of just one paragraph from Mr. Ruehl’s article reveals that his argument is a shoddy one, essentially a form of yellow journalism, based on manipulative sources designed to “jazz up” an image of the Chinese state for Global English publics now accustomed to a regular diet of China criminalization reports.
While you focus on the veracity of the claims about Xu Xiaodong, you have in fact not proved what you assert you did, that the claims about his credit score are wrong. You merely said you don’t like the sourcing. Name-calling him when you have not made your case is not warranted.
It is also remarkable to see you try to attack the South China Morning Post’s bona fides, while not mentioning its headline: China’s censorship of Xu Xiaodong for exposing fake martial arts masters is alarming.
The subhead:
Further on:
The direct punishments include limits on engaging in market activities. The credit score looks as much a corroboration as a trigger (emphasis ours).
So any searches by you on Chinese search engines will come up short since it appears Xu’s been depersoned. A court judgment is dispositive. And that per many accounts, including those in Global Times, is the sort of thing the social credit score is explicitly designed to pick up.
And it is not hard to bypass the South China Morning Post paywall. One has to wonder why you didn’t. One has to question you banging on about Quartz and not even acknowledging what the South China Morning Post headline said (ie, Xu is being subjected to real punishments by the government) or what the accessible parts showed:
This plus two and a half text paragraphs were outside the paywall:
In the UK and where I am now, what Xu said would be defamation (as in truth is no defense) and can result in steep fines and here, in the case of repeat behavior by foreigners, visa cancellation and deportation, so the government steps in. Even though I have worked with the Japanese extensively, I have still not internalized how big a deal “face” is in most of Asia. Someone who lost a defamation case here told me that the court warned him that that would happen if there was a second instance.
South China Morning Post also has a long description of their reporting methods and standards: https://www.scmp.com/policies-and-standards#participation
One of our contacts is a professional journalist, started multiple sports publications, and now has a top MMA-focused website. I can see if this controversy got traction in his circles (it likely did) and what other information he has.
It would be illogical for a state-owned banking system (aka, China) to rely on a private corporate credit scoring system as in the US, where private banks also unduly influence US governmental policies.
Additionally, China directs its investments (aka, loans, financial services) for CPC industrial aims – it would be surprising if it also did not include a “social” good level, as in the US, where bank redlining kept undesirables out of neighborhoods or current priority for minority-business’s in govt contracting if there is no arrest record or income tax issues or (a long list of problems that beset minority communities preferentially).
Maybe there are genuine “social credit systems” in the world, but it seems the Chinese system has been twisted out of recognition for propaganda purposes. If you believe what you have heard or read about China’s social credit system, you probably also believe in the ‘Uyghur Genocide’ in Xinjiang. In other words, you are either a Sinophobe or very gullible.
Oh, so what Global Times, an official organ, says is anti-China propaganda? It says that social credit scores have been “pulled” as we say in the US, an average of six times per person in the system….which is larger than the adult population of China.
To deploy this quote yet again:
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202504/1331426.shtml
And yes, this is the social credit system per the headline to that article: “China builds world’s largest and most comprehensive social credit system: PBC official”
In other words, you look very wedded to your priors. Specifically, this looks like the cognitive bias called halo effect, of needing to see people and institutions as all good or all bad.
I am not terribly interested in the social credit system per se. What bothers me is that readers appear strongly inclined to dismiss any of what they perceive to be negative information about China out of hand. That’s just the mirror image of believing China demonization.