Social Credit and the Financialisation of Governance in China

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Social Credit and the Financialisation of Governance in China ON A CHINESE SCREEN ‘Face, Face, Face.’ PC: Terhide Tomori, Flickr. The Global Age of com. Algorithm Social Credit and the Financialisation of Governance in China Nicholas LOUBERE Stefan BREHM Much has been made of the Orwellian social Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern control aspects of the emerging ‘social credit society. Who shall say that this is not the system’ in China. However, social credit golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited is more than simply a Chinese version of reliance upon human promises? big brother: it is an unprecedented climax of the global financialisation project Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner, and a signal of a potential dark digital The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today (1873) future dominated by algorithmic rule. n recent years, few news items out of China have resulted in as much anxiety and fear Iin western media and public discourse than the Chinese government’s ongoing attempts to create a ‘social credit system’ (shehui xinyong 142 MADE IN CHINA YEARBOOK 2018 ON A CHINESE SCREEN tixi) aimed at rating the trustworthiness big data generated from economic, social, of individuals and companies. Most major and commercial behaviour. The stated aim Western media outlets have spent significant is to ‘provide the trustworthy with benefits energy warning about China’s efforts to create and discipline the untrustworthy … [so that] an Orwellian dystopia. The most hyperbolic integrity becomes a widespread social value’ of these—The Economist—has even run with (State Council 2016). While official policy menacing headlines like ‘China Invents documents are light on detail with regard to the Digital Totalitarian State’ and ‘China’s how the social credit system will ultimately Digital Dictatorship’ (The Economist 2016b; operate, they have suggested various ways The Economist 2016c). These articles both to punish untrustworthy members of society implicitly and explicitly depict social credit as (i.e. those with low ratings), such as through something unique to China—a nefarious and restrictions on employment, consumption, perverse digital innovation that could only be travel, and access to credit. In recent months, conceived of and carried out by a regime like there have already been reports of blacklisting the Chinese Communist Party (Daum 2017). resulting in restrictions for individuals, but Social credit is thus seen as signalling the as of yet this only applies to those who have onset of a dystopian future that could only broken specific laws or ‘failed to perform exist in the Chinese context. But how unique to certain legal obligations’ (Daum 2018a). China is this attempt to ‘build an environment The Chinese social credit system is emerging of trust’—to quote the State Council (2016)— rapidly, and the aforementioned blacklists are using new digital forms of data collection and connecting data from dozens of governmental analysis? Is this Orwellian social credit system departments. However, it is still far from indicative of an inherently Chinese form of being a unified or centralised system. Like digital life, or is it a dark manifestation of our most new policies in China, social credit is collective impulses to increase transparency being subjected to the country’s distinctive and accountability (at the expense of privacy), policy modelling process (Heilmann 2008), and to integrate everyone into a single where local governments produce their own ‘inclusive’ system to more easily categorise, interpretations of policies, which then vie monitor, and standardise social activity? In this to become national models. Over 30 local essay, we propose that Chinese social credit governments have already started piloting should not be exoticised or viewed in isolation. social credit systems, which utilise different Rather, it must be understood as merely one approaches to arrive at their social credit manifestation of the global age of the algorithm. scores, and which use the scores to achieve different outcomes. In contrast to other policies, however, large Internet companies Engineering a have also been given licenses to run their own pilots (Loubere 2017a). The most widely used Trustworthy Society private social credit system is Alibaba’s Sesame Credit, which utilises opaque algorithms While there have long been discussions to arrive at social credit scores for their about creating an economic and social rating customers. Those with high scores have been system in China, they took a much more able to access a range of benefits from other concrete form in 2014, with the publication of Alibaba businesses and their partners (Bislev a high-level policy document outlining plans 2017). Sesame Credit is significant due to to create a nationwide social credit system the huge amounts of economic data held by by 2020 (State Council 2014). The proposed Alibaba through Alipay and Ant Financial, but system will assign ratings to individuals, it should not be conflated with governmental organisations, and businesses that draw on MADE IN CHINA YEARBOOK 2018 143 ON A CHINESE SCREEN social credit system pilots. It is not clear how inclusion project, which seeks to integrate or if the government and private systems will marginal and impoverished populations into be integrated in the future, which seems to be the global capitalist system—primarily through causing a degree of tension between regulators expanded access to credit—as a means of and the Internet giants (Hornby, Ju, and promoting economic development and social Lucas 2018). empowerment. In the same way that Chinese social credit appears poised to extract huge amounts of Financial(ised) Inclusion personal data from individuals in its quest to create a trustworthy society, proponents of financial inclusion justify intrusive methods While social credit can be seen as an of assessing creditworthiness in order to outgrowth of our collective impulse to achieve reduce lender risk from untrustworthy a more trustworthy society, a unified fully- borrowers. Indeed, just months before their functioning social credit system will ultimately hyperbolic headlines about China’s digital turn the quest for trust through transparency authoritarianism, The Economist praised the and accountability upside down, because it use of psychometrics and other personal digital would hold citizens responsible vis-à-vis their data by lenders in developing contexts as being a rulers. At the core of the emerging system, beneficial financial innovation (The Economist the state and financial actors define, quantify, 2016a). In this way, the financial inclusion and calculate trustworthiness and honesty—it project depicts the application of financialised is a technocratic fix based on the logic that, logics as the means of producing a more fair with the correct set of algorithms, the good and accountable inclusive system, where the citizen can be engineered into society. Social trustworthy reap rewards that were denied credit therefore seeks to transform individuals them in the past. However, underpinning this into a new ‘civilised’ (and ‘credit-conscious’) neoliberal fantasy is a glaring contradiction population through the imposition of an that shatters the illusion of inclusion as being incentive and disincentive system that can unbiased and fair—those with capital are able mould logical profit-maximising citizens into to set the terms of their engagement with the civilised subjects. capitalist system much more easily than those In the case of China’s proposed social credit without. system—as with any credit rating system— This points to the fact that the rich will these rewards and punishments are meted out largely be able to extract more of the rewards through engagement with, and incorporation from their participation in financialised rating into, the market. The calculation of credit scores systems—such as the social credit system— requires market activity, which in turn requires while avoiding the sanctions. Moreover, a credit score. Moreover, if social credit is to live punishments are much more dramatic for up to its technocratic promise of systematically those without accumulated capital, as their eliminating untrustworthiness, everyone must very existence depends on their continued be assessed equally—i.e. everyone must be participation in the capitalist system for daily included in the system. In the absence of a survival. From this perspective, the spectre social credit score, the worst must be assumed, of China’s financialised social credit system meaning that the burden of proving ones portents a society comprising individual micro- trustworthiness falls to the individual. Thus, in entrepreneurs operating in a shared economy a society dominated by social credit, integration mode where livelihoods are determined by into the socioeconomic system is a necessity credit scores. Indeed, Sesame Credit already rather than a choice. In this way, China’s social works with sharing economy apps, such as credit resonates with the global financial Daowei, which provides a platform for a literal 144 MADE IN CHINA YEARBOOK 2018 ON A CHINESE SCREEN gig economy comprised of individuals (with maximisation into the realm of interpersonal their credit scores listed) advertising the sale relationships. Through managing networks, of their services or products (Loubere 2017b). digital activity, and private action, an individual Those looking for a plumber in the area can or organisation can impact social value and, by select one with the highest score, just as people extension, financial capital. Thus,
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