Sorting citizens: Governing via China's social credit system

Abstract

China's social credit system can be examined as a governance tool which sorts citizenship behaviors into trustworthy and untrustworthy categories as part of the regime's long‐standing effort to cultivate a loyal citizenry. Based on a data set comprised of central‐level official documents, national model citizen lists, and media reports, this study qualitatively examines how the Chinese state constructs “good” and “bad” citizen ideal types. Contrary to media depictions of the system as digital totalitarianism, political behaviors are not the sole criterion for sorting citizens into categories. In fact, the state constructs “bad” (untrustworthy) citizens as those who engage in a wide range of behaviors, including financial and professional misconduct. Simultaneously, the state also uses the system to construct and cultivate “good” (trustworthy) citizens as those who publicly demonstrate loyalty to the regime. Theoretically, this study sheds light on how the world's most powerful authoritarian regime governs through a system that distributes material and symbolic capital.

From coercion to cooperation: Urban governance and evolving modes of control in a Beijing village

“…Once in the system, it took another year until her name was removed from the list and she became eligible to buy high-speed train tickets. According to the National Development and Reform Commission, which oversees the SCS, over 3 million high-speed train ticket sales had been blocked through the blacklist system by March 2018 (Xu and Xiao, 2018).…”