Doing gendered citizenship from the MARGINS

Sorting citizens: Governing via China's social credit system

“…Placed in historical context, the SCS is part of a long‐standing series of citizen cultivation projects in China (Weerdt, 2019). The Chinese state has launched various types of citizen cultivation projects ( peiyang ) in different historical eras (Fong & Murphy, 2006). In fact, the top‐down construction of ideals of “good” and “bad” citizens dates as far back as the Qing emperors, who were attuned to ideological governance, which “asserts a role for the government as a pedagogical state that has the responsibility to provide order and prosperity through civilizing its citizens…” (Cheek, 2020, p. 4).…”

“…In the economic reform era (1979–2008), citizenship cultivation continued to be a main component of the party‐state's project to modernize Chinese society. In some of China's poorest provinces, both cadres and peasants were subject to citizenship education that included a moral component seeking to transform peasants who were considered “lazy, irrational, complacent, ignorant, and backward”—bad citizens—into productive and civilized members of society (Fong & Murphy, 2006). Citizenship education in that era was also considered an essential part of China's global ambition, as it sought to transform “China's backward masses into a scientifically normalized, modern society fitting of a global power” (Greenhalgh, 2010, p. 37).…”