Recently there has been criticism of China's "social credit score" from a variety of US sources that have appeared online from people such as Vice President Mike Pence and media corporations like the NY Post. Horsley, who has a career in Chinese studies and lived in China for almost a decade, challenges those interpretations, and offers many corrections to such views.
Unfortunately, most of her links are necessarily to Chinese documents in Chinese characters. She argues that there is not a general score used by the Chinese government on individuals, but there are many private companies and individual towns and cities that use such scores. One excellent link (in English) that she provides illustrates how Chinese private companies use scores, and is from Wired. She reminds us that in the USA, banks and credit agencies make use credit scores on individuals; and other companies track what you purchase.
It’s not surprising that myths about the system are spreading, given the shrinking space in China for civil society, rights lawyering, speech, investigative journalism, and religious belief; its increasingly ubiquitous, invasive surveillance capability; and the Chinese Communist Party’s push to apply big data and artificial intelligence in governance. China’s party-state is collecting a vast amount of information on its citizens, and its social credit system and other developments internally and overseas raise many serious concerns. But contrary to the mainstream media narrative on this, Chinese authorities are not assigning a single score that will determine every aspect of every citizen’s life—at least not yet.
