Literature and Insights: My Name is Red: an imaginary immersion into the voices and murmurs of the Chinese social credit system and its artifacts
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: AAAJ Literature and InsightsMy Name is Red: an imaginary immersion into the voices and murmurs of the Chinese social credit system and its artifacts Prologue This piece is part of a larger project we have been working on related to the Chinese Social Credit System (SCS).Under the SCS project, since 2014, China launched a vast series of initiatives at rural, urban, provincial and national levels that aim to monitor and educate its entire population and businesses for their credit/trustworthiness.To do so, a large and diverse constellation of private and public entities are engaged in tracking, and recording the behaviors of individuals, as well as businesses, with the objective to educate them through the cultivation of fundamental values like trust, creditworthiness and honesty.SCS comprises three main infrastructures, credit ratings (not unlike those in the west), black and red lists which are publicly communicated list of untrustworthy and model companies and citizens, and social credit scores, which are diverse scoring systems of company/citizens' social behavior being deployed at urban and provincial levels.This interconnected system uses a mix of market incentives and deprivations, public naming and shaming and a vast communication and educational apparatus to create a culture of social trust and market credibility (Bach, 2020;Wang et al., 2023).SCS is an example of an important mutation of performance measurement (Stark, 2020)increasingly used as an appealing accounting technology to govern citizens and companies.On the back of datafication of all aspects of life and artificial intelligence/ machine learning, scoring, rankings and lists are used for the behavioral governance of citizens and organizations.While the SCS might be unique in its scope and totalizing ambitions, many governments around the world -including Western ones -are experimenting with using Big-Data/AI to create vast performance measurement systems to govern citizensThis piece is inspired by three years of research on social media, but also policy documents, news and interviews with Chinese citizens.In this work, we have been assisted by a Chinese research assistant, who has requested not to be named.One of us has worked in China for several years and has basic knowledge of Mandarin.Over the years, we have read many accounts of the SCS -predominantly, from Chinese policymakers/official media, concerned Western academics, and journalists but also from Western media.Some of these accounts are laudatory and some (the latter) are overtly concerned.However, in all these accounts the Chinese citizens dealing with this system are mostly voiceless.Furthermore, the technological/material aspect of the SCS is mostly blackboxed and the "socio-material" murmuring of the system such as challenges in the use of facial recognition systems or the tensions involved in ubiquitous data collection about citizens in all points of contact and transactions are mostly left out.Similarly, some
Authors: Julien Malaurent, Afshin Mehrpouya
Language: English
Subfield: Safety Research
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4401525309