I ardently oppose the use of surveillance mechanisms in regulating the relationship between individuals and governance structures. As a result of three interrelated dynamics, rather than creating ‘perfect’ citizens, social credit systems are more likely to create calculated and passive subjects.
John Cheney-Lippold removes China from the analysis. Abstracting a social credit system allows him to ask more general questions: What do all social credit systems purportedly want? And most importantly: What is the 'social' in social credit?
This blog post suggests that it is preferable to regard China's Social Credit Systems as a specific instance of a wider phenomenon. In this respect, China may be considered as a 'normal country' experimenting with rating-based forms of governance.
The Chinese Social Credit System, in particular as presented by Western media, is widely seen as the height of technological dystopia. But is that intuition well founded? Wessel Reijers has sought to identify features that he takes to justify a rejection of the Chinese Social Credit System but forgoes an equally critical consideration of the alternatives. Relying on the market, the default solution of Western societies, is not obviously more just.
The Chinese Social Credit System gets easily likened to dystopian science fiction scenarios in the West, which at least in part seems to be related to the authoritarian character of the Chinese state. But we should assess the Social Credit System in its own right, asking: is the implementation of a Social Credit System leading to a dystopian political system?
13. September 2025
Giovanni Capoccia
12. September 2025
Anne Peters
12. September 2025
Anne Peters