Social Credit: The Warring States of China’s Emerging Data Empire

ISBN-13: 9789819921881 / Angielski

Vincent Brussee

Opis

China’s Social Credit System has fundamentally re-shaped of surveillance worldwide, with discussions of it making it into hundreds of media headlines and all the way into European Union legislation and the United Nations. Social Credit offers one of the first comprehensive assessments of this infamous system. It is aimed at the many experts and professionals – both scholarly and more broadly – that have to deal with its fallout on a regular basis. In a concise format, it covers the questions that have garnered the most attention worldwide: from social credit scoring and blacklists to its history and theoretical foundation. Throughout, its core thesis is that more often than not, even China’s government is at a loss what to do with this messy and complex initiative. This has caused fragmented and low-tech implementation, but where insufficient legal safeguards can have far-reaching implications for the normal market order and for human rights.

Spis treści

Chapter 1. Introduction

Wrapped tableware, train announcements, and shared bikes

Getting social credit right is key to understanding 21st-century surveillance

Making sense of social credit

Outline of the book

Chapter 2. The Social Credit System’s emergence and global roots

The emergence of the Social Credit System

The trifecta of “credit” problems

How the “West” inspired China’s Social Credit System

A warning-sign for China

Where the SCS deviates from established credit systems

Chapter 3.  The Policy Umbrella of Social Credit

Confused

Systems-engineering China

Social credit as a mechanism

Merging finance, market regulation, and “morality”

Trust everywhere, in everyone, and everything

The relationship between the market and government under the SCS

It’s messy

Chapter 4. Limitless Expansion, Fragmented Development: A Policy History of the Social Credit System (2002-2020)

Setting sail

Experimentation turns into disorientation

Enter phase two: the Planning Outline kicks development into fifth gear

From the planning outline to local implementation

Fragmentation

Glorified spreadsheets as digitisation

Creating space for abuse

Ambition meets bureaucratic reality

Chapter 5: No Credit for Culprits

Untrustworthy

A web of blacklists

Humans pushing buttons

Naming and shaming

Seeing red

Who are the culprits?

European firms are the gold standard of credit

Repairing one’s credit

Evaluating success and concerns: not black and white red

Chapter 6. One Step Back to Put More Forward: The Covid-19 Pandemic and Its Aftermath

Viral issues

Flexible yet legally ambiguous

The central government pulls in the reins

Less is more

The next step forward: credit risk classification and management

Chapter 7. Mythbusters: anatomy of social credit scoring

1984 or 2020?

The emergence of the myth

Social credit scoring in practice – more myth than reality

Xi would not care for a social credit score

Non-credit scoring in China

Building a good policy response to the Social Credit System

Social credit as a mirror

Chapter 8. The future of the Social Credit System

A strange law

Future priorities

O autorze

Vincent Brussee is an Analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, Europe’s largest think tank and research institute on contemporary China. He is the institute’s lead researcher on the Social Credit System. In addition to publishing extensively for MERICS, his work has been featured in Foreign Policy, the Diplomat, and various national outlets in Europe. He holds a graduate degree with the highest distinction in Asian Studies from Leiden University (the Netherlands), focusing on China’s domestic governance.

Blurb

​"Vincent Brussee is one of the very few scholars who I regularly recommend as essential reading on China’s social credit system. For years, he has remained consistently abreast of the latest developments in this complicated and evolving area, and his writing has helped to dispel the fog of misinformation that surrounds the subject in popular media."

--Jeremy Daum, Senior Research Fellow, Paul Tsai China Center, Yale University School of Law

"China’s Social Credit System has been a source for fanciful speculation and gratuitous mythmaking. How does it actually work in practice? This book provides a rigorous and detailed review of the system’s historical evolution, its structuring, and its functionality and dysfunctionality. It provides a useful corrective to dominant narratives, as well as a fascinating insight into governance reform in China."

 - Rogier Creemers, Assistant Professor at Leiden University

China’s Social Credit System has fundamentally re-shaped global notions of surveillance, making it into European Union legislation and hundreds of media headlines. Drawing on a rich body of empirical evidence, this book offers one of the first comprehensive assessments of this infamous system, from its fragmented implementation to its implications for both human rights and the market order. Surprisingly, it illustrates even China's government is confused about this messy initiative. Separating fact from fiction, Social Credit is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in technology, governance, and surveillance in China and beyond.  

Vincent Brussee is an Analyst at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, Europe’s largest think tank and research institute on contemporary China. He is the institute’s lead researcher on the Social Credit System. In addition to publishing extensively for MERICS, his work has been featured in Foreign Policy, the Diplomat, and various national outlets in Europe. He holds a graduate degree with the highest distinction in Asian Studies from Leiden University (the Netherlands), focusing on China’s domestic governance.