The evolution of the Chinese Social Scoring

The new Chinese law on social scoring promises to strengthen and graft the system into every economic and social sphere. Is it an open window on our future?

I have often had the opportunity to talk about social credit. Between more or less developed systems and local experiments, examples are certainly not lacking. China has always been a benchmark, even if the system today is still far from how most people imagine it.

There are some pilot trials and some local systems, but other than that, not much. However, this does not mean that the government is not interested in carrying out the project. Indeed, it seems that they want to give a big boost to its development.

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From covid passes to social credit

It’s quite known that the Chinese government is willing to do anything to maintain social order. This is demonstrated by the extensive use of covid passes in recent months, while the western countries seems to have abandoned them. The covid pass, as mentioned several times also on these pages, is nothing more than a crude and limited social credit system passed off as something else: green, you're among the good ones; red — grounded.

The Chinese government makes no secret of it: in recent months they have had no problem using the covid pass to dampen uncomfortable protests in the bud, changing the status of the protesters' pass from green to red. I remind you that a covid red pass in China is equivalent to forced incarceration in "quarantine camps" where you know when you enter, but you don't know when you’ll be able to leave.

But why limit yourself to the covid pass, when you could create a much more pervasive system, completely integrated in every social and economic area?

The evolution of the social credit system

This is where the new bill called “Social Credit System Construction Law of the People's Republic of China” comes into play.