Blacklisted: China’s Social Credit System
United States’ Recent Conflict with China
In the early morning of Wednesday July 22nd, The United States government abruptly announced that the people’s Republic of China was to close its Houston, Texas consulate general and vacate the building within 72 hours. China now maintains one embassy in Washington D.C. and 4 consulates general in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco. This order came in response to allegations by the Trump administration that the consulate was conducting “massive illegal spying and influence operations” (New York Times). Just one day prior, two Chinese hackers were charged with data-tapping United States-based companies with the aim of discovering Covid-19 vaccine research. In retaliation to their consulates’ forced closure, China seized the United States consulate in Chengdu (CNN). China and the United States closing each others’ consulates heightens the already overflowing tensions concerning data security between the two nations. On November 1 of 2019, the U.S. ordered the launch of a security investigation into the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok. On July 31 of 2020, the Trump administration announced that it is looking into forcing ByteDance Ltd., a Chinese internet company headquartered in Beijing, to sell its ownership stake in the company. Microsoft has been in negotiations with ByteDance to buy TikTok’s US operations. The app has been under scrutiny from Congress due to the possibility that it could pass data onto the authoritarian Chinese Government. On August 1, 2020, President Trump disclosed that the United States is looking into banning the TikTok platform, for its risk to national security. Even though the United States’ approach to China’s data collection policies might seem pre-cautious, China has been experimenting with a radical form of data surveillance on their own population.
China’s Social Credit System
In 2014, China released a beta version of their Social Credit System, or SCS. The purpose of the SCS is to reward and punish citizens for their good and bad social, political, and financial behavior. In this system, an individual or organization is monitored and assigned a credit score based on their actions. The three components that make up the system are the master database, the blacklist system, and the rewards and punishments. The master database has access to all government records which include identity records, tax records, safety inspections, traffic violations, police reports, etc. The data is collected and stored across hundreds of databases, owned by both public and private companies. The Chinese government has had difficulty compiling all of the data onto one system. The current system consists of numerous groups of data, also known as data islands, that are stored throughout corporations and on the national, provincial, and municipal government levels. The blacklist system encompasses hundreds of lists that most commonly restrict companies and organizations, but may include individuals. Organizations and individuals can be blacklisted for polluting, failing to pay wages, social insurance fraud, or even for disseminating banned content online. The main purpose of the blacklist system is to control large corporations that are becoming increasingly difficult to regulate. The final component of SCS, the rewards and punishments, exists solely to coerce governmentally-acceptable behavior. This element of SCS seeks to utilize operant conditioning and expand to a societal scale. Xi Jinping spoke to the purpose of the system, by explaining that “everything is convenient for the trustworthy, and the untrustworthy are unable to move a single step” (Trivium). Those within Xi’s administration see the Social Credit System as an inevitable next step. Claire Seungeun Lee, an expert on SCS, summarizes the goals of the system; “the government aims to build a trustworthy social credit system with a role model development, civil service integrity management, education enhancement, as well as law enforcement credibility and faith in public safety” (Lee). The outcomes of the Social Credit System may have constructive benefits for Chinese society, but at what risk to public privacy rights.
Datafication and Dataveillance
SCS has been compared to a Black Mirror dystopia or even an Orwellian tool of mass surveillance. Citizens’ actions are monitored and recorded in the public and private spheres. A government’s ability to surveil its population stems from the continued advancements in social control, big data, and the interplay between criminology and sociology made in the past decade which culminate in a culture of dataveillance and datafication. Dataveillance can be described as the practice of monitoring digital data relating to personal details or online activities, while datafication is the transformation of social action into online quantified data. Datafication and dataveillance have been exposed even in the United States. We have seen Edward Snowden’s dismissal from the National Security Agency and the Cambridge Analytica scandal involving Facebook. Whether other nations will adapt China’s system of social surveillance is still unclear. Cybersecurity measures were developed using Chinese assistance in Tanzania, Uganda, and Vietnam within the past few years (Paresh). Although the Social Credit System is still in its infancy, SCS is set to be fully-operational by the end of 2020. Global economic and societal impacts can be expected in the coming decade.
Works Cited:
Dave, Paresh. “China Exports Its Restrictive Internet Policies to Dozens of Countries: Report.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 1 Nov. 2018, www.reuters.com/article/us-global-internet-surveillance/china-exports-its-restrictive-internet-policies-to-dozens-of-countries-report-idUSKCN1N63KE.
Griffiths, James, and Nicole Gaouette. “US Orders Closure of Chinese Consulate in Houston.” CNN, Cable News Network, 23 July 2020, www.cnn.com/2020/07/22/politics/china-us-houston-consulate-intl-hnk/index.html.
Myers, Steven Lee. “U.S. Orders China to Close Its Houston Consulate in 72 Hours.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 22 July 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/07/22/world/asia/us-china-houston-consulate.html.
Seungeun Lee, Claire. “Datafication, Dataveillance, and the Social Credit System as China’s New Normal.” Shibboleth Authentication Request, Emerald, 14 Oct. 2019, www-emerald-com.ezp1.villanova.edu/insight/content/doi/10.1108/OIR-08-2018-0231/full/html#sec003.
Trivium China. “Component 3: Rewards and Punishments - Trivium Social Credit - Tracking China's Social Credit System.” Trivium Social Credit, Trivium China, 27 Aug. 2019, socialcredit.triviumchina.com/what-is-social-credit/social-credit-the-big-picture/unified-rewards-and-punishments/.
