The Chinese Social Credit System. Origin, political design, exoskeletal morality and comparisons to Western systems.

Abstract

In 1999, Lin Junyue (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) developed a “Social Credit” scoring “System” to enhance trust and reliability in the Chinese market economy and strengthen social cohesion, individual ethical behavior, and political stability. In 2002, after the first experiments (in 2000) and fine tuning, Chinese president Jiang Zemin propagated this system in a public speech. In 2014 it was announced that every citizen and company would receive a unique ID and a score in 2020. The score (black list, no list, red list or even points), would indicate the holder’s financial and economic trustworthiness, as well as their filial piety and political loyalty. Low performers would be restricted, especially in mobility (access to planes, high speed trains etc.) and punished with public shame. High performers would be rewarded. This type of combined disciplinary and controlling society creates an exoskeletal, extrinsically motivated moral lead and reduces intrinsically motivated moral rule-following.

Full text

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF
CHINESE STUDIES 2 (2019)
— M. WOESLER, ED. —
▪ The Chinese
Social Credit System
▪ China-Spain Relations
during the Transition
Period (1976-1982)
▪ The Past
in the Present
▪ Chinese Literature
in Romania

European Journal of Chinese
Studies 2 (2019)
The Journal was founded in 2010 under the
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CONTENTS. EJCS 2 (2019) 5 5
Contents
EJCS 2 (2019)
The Chinese Social Credit System
Woesler, Martin; Warnke, Martin; Kettner,
Matthias & Lanfer, Jens ......................... 7-35
Neither Difference nor Distance Matters:
China-Spain Relations
during Adolfo Suárez' Government
Luo Huiling ........................................... 37-59
The Past in the Present
Messmann, Stefan .................................. 61-84
Chinese Literature in Romania
A Qualitative Study based on In-Depth
Interviews with the Agents Involved in
Sino-Romanian Transfer of Culture
Cîndea Gîţă, Iulia Elena &
Moratto, Riccardo ................................ 85-102
Index ............................................... 103-104
EJCS 3 (2020)
What we can learn from China
Why not 70% of the population will get
infected by COVID-19
and why the pandemic can not only be
slowed down, but stopped
Woesler, Martin ...................................... 7-35
Preliminary report of a study on Arabic
calligraphy of the Hui Muslims – the
example of the dū ās
(都阿)
Knüppel, Michael ................................... 37-42
China’s Civil Code and Civil Rights
Weyrauch, Thomas ................................. 43-48
Speaking and Recalling Bitterness in the
Anti-schistosomiasis Campaign of Hubei
Province in the 1960s
Fan, Ka-wai .......................................... 49-68
Index .......................................................... 69

6 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CHINESE STUDIES 2 (2019)

WOESLER/WARNKE/KETTNER/LANFER. THE CHINESE SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM. EJCS 2 (2019) 7 - 35 7
The Chinese Social
Credit System
Origin, political design,
exoskeletal morality and
comparisons to Western systems
Woesler, Martin, University Witten/Her-
decke (UW/H) / Germany;
Warnke, Martin. Leuphana University
Lüneburg / Germany;
Kettner, Matthias (UW/H) &
Lanfer, Jens (UW/H)
DOI:10.12906/9783865152993_002
Abstract
In 1999, Lin Junyue (Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences) developed a “Social
Credit” scoring “System” to enhance trust
and reliability in the Chinese market eco-
nomy and strengthen social cohesion, indi-
vidual ethical behavior, and political sta-
bility. In 2002, after the first experiments
(in 2000) and fine tuning, Chinese presi-
dent Jiang Zemin propagated this system in
a public speech. In 2014 it was announced
that every citizen and company would
receive a unique ID and a score in 2020.
The score (black list, no list, red list or even
points), would indicate the holder’s
financial and economic trustworthiness, as
well as their filial piety and political loyalty.
Low performers would be restricted,
especially in mobility (access to planes,
high speed trains etc.) and punished with
public shame. High performers would be
rewarded. This type of combined
disciplinary and controlling society creates
an exoskeletal, extrinsically motivated
moral lead and reduces intrinsically
motivated moral rule-following.
Key words
social credit system, trust, reliability, Chi-
nese market economy, experiments, unique
id, piety, political loyalty, low performers,
mobility restriction, public shame, exoske-
letal ethics, intrinsically motivated moral
rule-following
1. Introduction
Since the 1980s, the People’s Republic of
China (PRC) has experienced a remarkable
economic boom. In the course of this,

8 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CHINESE STUDIES 2 (2019)
negative phenomena such as product
piracy, patent infringements, trickery, labor
exploitation, and environmental pollution
have been noted, and there are persistent
complaints about corruption in the public
administration and the party apparatus
(Wedeman 2004) – which have also been
analyzed as systemic (Zhu 2012).
Representative surveys (Wang 2008) and
analyses (Zhang 2003) have noted a lack of
trust in the country's citizens, enterprises
and organizations. Since the beginning of
the 21st century, regional test runs of a
system for social trustworthiness, with list-
or points-based assessments for citizens
and organizations, have been carried out
(http://www.chinacredit.gov.cn).
In 1999, the professor of economics, Lin
Junyue (Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences), developed the idea of a “social
credit system”. From around the turn of
the millennium, it has been tested and Lin
has monitored its implementation. (Lin
2015, Louvet 2019, Settelen 2019).
Lin is very pleased with the results; he is
sure that a movement like the “yellow
vests” in France could have been
prevented if the social credit system had
been implemented there as well. The basic
idea behind the system, he says, is to ease
the burden on prisons, because critics are
quickly encouraged to 'mend their ways' by
hints from their acquaintances (social
nudging). Lin hopes to export the system
to “capitalist countries”. He claims that
Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Poland and Chile
have already signaled interest (Louvet
2019).
In 2002, in a plenary speech at the XVI
Central Committee, President Jiang Zemin
justified the introduction of a Social Credit
System as a way to promote a free-flow
economy (Jiang 2002). In 2007, the State
Council officially decided to introduce it.
In the Anglophone context, the term
“Social Credit System” (SCS) was coined.
Large internet technology companies
competed for the official state contract
along with private commercial point
systems (e.g. Alibaba's Sesame Credit
system) and different point scales. In 2014,
the State Council announced the
implementation of the SCS nationwide by
2020 (State Council 2014). Over the course
of time official texts have always asserted
that the SCS corresponds exactly to the
respective current political orientation or
terminology, such as the “Chinese-style

WOESLER/WARNKE/KETTNER/LANFER. THE CHINESE SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM. EJCS 2 (2019) 7 - 35 9
socialist market economy” or Xi Jinping's
ideas (Xi 2014).
In fact, since 2017 (these are the earliest
documents the authors could find),
companies which had wanted to register
their business in the PRC were already
given only one number, the SCS number.
Under this one registration number, data
from various authorities are stored
centrally, so that all data can be accessed
under one number. (Woesler 2021)
In China, for millennia, trade has been
based on trust, which often has to be built
upon human relationships. In Internet
commerce, this lack of acquaintance has
been successfully replaced by ratings in the
PRC. This experience is to be transferred
to the whole society with the SCS.
The SCS not only includes financial criteria
in its assessment, like the “credit history”
in the U.S. and Schufa/Credit reform in
Germany, but also, in much greater detail,
incorporates almost total surveillance: civil
and criminal violations (payment morale,
punctuality of tax returns and payments)
and misdemeanors (such as parking
violations, jaywalking, sitting in the wrong
seat in the subway), are included along with
social behavior, such as the obligation to
visit one's parents. It assesses political
loyalty by monitoring social media, social
contacts, friendships, and interactions by
and with party members. (Woesler 2021)
makes the finely graded SCS ranking of a
company much more meaningful than the
broad AAA ratings of American rating
agencies and makes it interesting for stock
speculators, funds, mergers and
acquisitions, for tracking down takeover
candidates, filtering applicants for large
tenders, and for industrial espionage.
While foreigners and foreign companies are
only part of the system if they have
residency in the PRC, SCS is only one
system to monitor people and
organizations, as can be seen by Chinese
operations outside of China (McGregor
2021).
The SCS appears to be a strong extension
of the concept of punishment for venial
offenses, such as misdemeanors. The SCS
aims to change the trust (from Latin
creditum “that which is entrusted in good
faith”) in a person or institution. Sanctions
are imposed (the publicly visible score and,
since June 2018, full names of black listed
people on https://www.creditchina.gov.cn)
through privileges (preferential treatment

10 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CHINESE STUDIES 2 (2019)
in rental contracts, visa applications, tax
declarations, etc.) or exclusion, comparable
to the ancient shard court (ostracism);
inclusion and exclusion include not only
financial credits but also social
participation such as the use of high-speed
trains or airplanes and a more or less
smooth handling of official procedures.
Western reporting has so far been limited
to the 2014-2020 phase, mostly in the form
of criticism towards the evaluation criteria
(such as principles that are highly
problematic from a Western perspective
like political loyalty). It has portrayed and
criticized a system of near total surveillance
and a lack of rule of law, a disregard for
data protection and privacy, and has been
mostly focused on dramatic individual fates
(as in the event of system failures or
draconian punishments).
Figure 1: In this illustration by Nazalya 2019, the
social credit system is thought to have started in
2009 or later. In fact, conceptualization began in the
1990s with first test-runs around 2000.
Due to the language barrier, the
international community has only been
able to take note of a very small section of
the materials which have been available to
the Chinese public for much longer than
generally known (from as early as Jiang's
speech in 2002). If these documents are
included in an assessment of this system,
the picture becomes much more
complicated. It becomes clear that
although the SCS began with the goal of
promoting the economy, it has gradually
and systematically expanded to include the
general trustworthiness of all actors –
including the government – in all areas of
society and for all concerns.
At its core, the SCS enables the free
movement of capital and rapid decision-
making on production processes, while, at
the same time, maintaining the overarching
control of the state (and thus the party) and
enforcing a political canon of values.
But the SCS also has an external effect; it
creates the conditions for participation in
world trade under capitalistic principles on
a sound business basis. From the outset,
the SCS was designed, and strictly
operated, with a view to its
computerization. (Woesler 2021) With the
advent of the global internet (and its

WOESLER/WARNKE/KETTNER/LANFER. THE CHINESE SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM. EJCS 2 (2019) 7 - 35 11
Chinese, partly delimited variant), it can
now find its technical realization.
Thus, the SCS integrates subsectors of
Chinese society and at the same time
shapes the external relationship of the
People's Republic of China to globalized
capitalism. It shows itself to be in harmony
with the traditional values of Confucianism
and the state ideology of historical
materialism (which sees the economy as
the basis of all social development). While
this is alienating to international, especially
Western understanding, it does
demonstrate why the SCS is enforceable in
the PRC. However, neoliberal and
parliamentary countries should not
overlook the fact that they too know
monitoring and evaluation (which,
incidentally, provided models for the
Chinese SCS through its rating systems).
The basis of this article is a translation and
evaluation of extensive official (and
unofficial) documents, which chronologi-
cally document the source and emergence
of the SCS since 2000, trace the systematic
expansion from assessment criteria and
application fields initially based solely on
economic aspects to society as a whole,
and describe the motivation and objectives
of the system (document collection
published as Woesler 2021). These
documents discuss the assessment
categories and the actions assessed, the
authorities involved and cooperation with
global companies. They furthermore reveal
the focus on operation and information
implementation and discourse on both the
impact internally (on the Chinese state and
its people) and externally (on international
trading partners).
For the text selection, we first reviewed all
official documents that could be found
with Chinese and Western search engines,
and we also followed up on tips from CCP
members and overviews of thematically
relevant portals of sites in Germany and
China. The texts were then assessed and
evaluated according to their relevance. The
results of the evaluation have been
incorporated into this article.
2. Origins, Objectives and Scientific
Analysis of the Social Credit System
The SCS has been widely implemented but
not yet extensively studied scientifically. In
this paper, we therefore look at the
conception of the system, trace its genesis,
and approach its essence in terms of
conceptual definition.

12 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CHINESE STUDIES 2 (2019)
Considering the lack of trust in Chinese
enterprises in the global market (as well as
the lack of trust in the domestic market
due to fraud and criminal behavior) and in
an effort to improve reliability for
enterprises, individuals and government
institutions, the PRC began to build SCS in
2000, and planned to be fully implement it
by 2020. SCS operates on a data collection
system and automatically combines and
analyzes data from bank accounts, video
surveillance, purchases, tax returns,
movement profiles, traffic and social
behavior (such as mandatory parental
visitation), chat histories, and use of
Internet media in general. When
considering “social behavior,” it apparently
goes beyond Western and international
credit score aspects. By negatively rating
critical chat posts and befriending
dissidents, positive political expressions of
opinion are also encouraged. In addition, a
list of sanctions, including public black lists
based on the idea of “public shaming,” are
used as “sticks and carrots” for citizens and
businesses.
The localized translation “social credit
system” is not self-explanatory and does
not quite get to the heart of the matter. In
fact, when Western readers think of the
term “social credit,” they think of points
for social commitment such as those that
can be earned during university studies
(which are called “social credit points” in
reference to the “credit points” for
studies). Such points are not included in
the evaluation of the study program, but
they can document voluntary commitment,
e.g. on a diploma supplement. The Chinese
term, xinyong “ 信用”, (sometimes
chengxin “诚信”) does stand for “credit”
in the sense of a credit card, but it can also
mean “trust,” “reliability,”
“trustworthiness,” “loyalty” and “political
loyalty”. Alternative translations for SCS
could therefore be: Social Compliance
Scoring System or Societal
Credibility/Reliability Index, etc.
Basically, the evaluation of complex phe-
nomena in metric systems (Beer 2016)
must be understood as a reduction that
creates a corresponding psychological,
group-dynamic, and extrinsic (mis)incen-
tives, and thus changes, which are similarly
(and indirectly – as social nudging)
controls; the manipulation of behavior.

WOESLER/WARNKE/KETTNER/LANFER. THE CHINESE SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM. EJCS 2 (2019) 7 - 35 13
3. Contextual embedding in “social
management”, phenomenology and
political slogans
The PRC government is currently building
a software system to govern the nation
(Digital System for Society Management
DSSM, officially called “social
management”). It consists of:
• an (declaredly complete) surveillance
system and centralized collection of all
accessible data including movement
profile, identity recognition, payments,
communication, behavior (preferen-
ces), and motivation (desires, dreams,
values and ideally, thoughts, with the
first experiments of brain scanners in
workers' hats having started in
Shanghai and Beijing);
• algorithmic and Big Data analysis;
• an information system to inform (and
lead) citizens;
• a motivational system (unconscious ad-
vertising / “priming”, social credits for
political loyalty); and
• a sanctions system which includes
awards with privileges (red lists), auto-
matic censorship, black listing (public
shaming), restriction of mobility,
imprisonment, gag orders, and, for
capital crimes, capital punishment
(estimated at up to several thousand
executions per year, e.g. for tax crimes
and for political reasons with,
purportedly, deterrent effect). SCS uses
the slogan, “Hamper every move of
low-performers.”
The “Social management system” aims at
achieving the following results:
1. It is to be artificially intelligent;
2. (ideally) fully automatic, with decisions
(including court decisions) made by
algorithms that are mainly based on
correlation rather than causality;
3. capable of learning from successes and
mistakes to optimize itself,
4. employed through indirect communi-
cation with users (since the system works
best when unknown to the user, e.g., di-
sease probabilities are already discovered
by correlation, but not necessarily commu-
nicated); and
5. employment of data exchange between
humans and machines, as well as between
machines.

14 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CHINESE STUDIES 2 (2019)
The legal framework, in the PRC, suits
massive data collection, as data protection
and data security are guaranteed for the
state, but not for the individual. Since the
government and the bureaucracy are
(mostly) built by officials, often
technocratic, of a single party, which has
the leading role in all areas of society. The
result being that the highest position in a
company or an academic institution is the
party secretary, not the company director
or the rector of the university.
The software-based scoring system is
supported in real life by education, which
includes indoctrination and propaganda,
and by the state guidance of every citizen
from preschool to retirement and beyond.
Ten percent of school classes, university
courses, and on-the-job training at party
schools, (for nonparty members as well)
upwards from the rank of department head
or dean, are dedicated to ideological
indoctrination.
Students must first become soldiers.
Military camps are located near university
campuses. The ever-expanding universities
are moreover assigned new campuses
outside the city gates.
Citizens are shaped by ideological training,
subjected to psychological pressure, and
swayed by group dynamics towards digital,
external control. SCS inventor Lin says
that, instead of the state imprisoning
people, under SCS, community members
nudge them towards expected
behaviors.The main motivating factor is
patriotism. In school and university
education one of the lessons is that the
PRC has had to overcome 150 years of
oppression by the West to return now to
the self-confidence and the former glory of
a world power. Privileges and honors are
conferred on citizens with high scores. For
example, Figure 2 shows posters on the
roadsides of the SCS model city of
Rongcheng promoting “model citizens”
with their pictures.

WOESLER/WARNKE/KETTNER/LANFER. THE CHINESE SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM. EJCS 2 (2019) 7 - 35 15
Figure 2: Presentation of Model Citizens in Rong-
cheng (Chiu 2019).
4. SCS test runs
In various regional test phases, individual
facts were cited for point deductions and
gains. Figure 3 is an illustrated overview of
a test in Suining.
Figure 3: Gain and subtraction of points in an SCS
variant (Pohlmann 2018).
The factors assessed include tax declaration
and payment morale, repayment of loans
and credit cards, payment morale for utility
bills and court fines; adherence to traffic
rules and to family planning requirements,
fare evasion, scientific and volunteer
activities, reverence for parents, criminal
record, interaction on the Net with other
netizens, fidelity of posts, and shopping
behavior (see figure 4).

16 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CHINESE STUDIES 2 (2019)
Figure 4: A systematic illustration by the Wall Street
Journal (McAllister 2019), which categorizes aspects
of Chinese sources. The Western way of illustrating
reminds one of the “Nuremberg funnel”.
The aspects under which those subjected
to the SCS are judged correspond to the
sources originated in the PRC (Chinese
Government Web 2014 ff).
Citizen control, according to our
observations and consistent reports from
private sources, can be broken down into
the following stages.
5. Framework
5.1 Disinformation
Studies by Harvard University and others
have proven that Chinese internet users do
not have access to approximately 17% of
the internet (Zittrain 2003, Qiang 2011,
Bamman 2012). Many scandals in the PRC,
including food scandals, corruption and
even the outbreak of the Coronavirus are
often later revealed to have been covered
up.
Most people in the world today live in filter
bubbles. These filter bubbles in the West
are created by IT and social media
companies. The combination of user
profile analysis and automatic mechanisms
for distribution and advertising result in
users preferring “fake news” and
conspiracy theories over truth. Although
users believe they themselves still have the
control, it is actually the people in the IT
and social media companies, that have the
highest level of control. The result is the
polarization of societies and a refusal to
engage in discussion and reflection on
one’s standpoint. The filter bubbles in the
PRC lead to political stability, patriotism, a
new pride. Both, the US and the PRC filter
bubbles nourish an attitude of polarization

WOESLER/WARNKE/KETTNER/LANFER. THE CHINESE SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM. EJCS 2 (2019) 7 - 35 17
between the United States and China. In
certain areas, however, where the different
content of education and PRC filter
bubbles lead to incompatibility with
international work force requirements or
international competition (such as the
acceptance of research papers in journals
and awards like the Nobel Prize), it is
crucial that the Chinese government
reconsiders its policy of certain filter
bubbles so that Chinese citizens and
Chinese companies are not disadvantaged
in global competition.
Recent historical events are deemed
“sensitive”. Thus it is that the PRC has not
yet come to terms with the Cultural
Revolution and the peaceful
demonstrations for democratization in
1989, with the latter being classified as
“counterrevolution” in subsequent PRC
history.
Contemporary international politics, for
their part, are played out differently by the
PRC overseas. This is especially the case
with the exercise of its power in the UN
Security Council, its exploration of Africa,
its geostrategic projects such as the “One
Belt One Road”, its involvement in the
islands in the South China Sea, and its
policy towards the Hong Kong question.
5.2 Brainwashing
The term “brainwashing” in English is one
of the few Chinese loan words, originating
from Chinese “xinao” 洗腦. It was first
used by Edward Hunter in 1950 to
describe PRC policies of compelling
submission and cooperation.
Ideological indoctrination begins in
kindergarten and continues through
kindergarten, preschool, elementary school,
junior high, high school, college/university
with a tutor for each student and adult
through working life, retirement, and unto
one’s death.
Now every Chinese citizen must spend
about ten percent of her / his study time
or work time in ideological education, and,
in case one has achieved a higher position
in one’s job, even in party schools. Often
their will is broken at preschool age,
sometimes during their military training.
The methodology of will-breaking is
simple. For example, students have to learn
by heart that the state capitalist economic
system in the PRC is a “socialist system”.
This contradicts students' knowledge of
economics, but they are asked to learn this

18 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CHINESE STUDIES 2 (2019)
factually incorrect term so many times
without explanation, and are subjected to
pressure exercised as deterrent, complete
with tutoring and group dynamics
processes until they resign and parrot
something they know is factually incorrect.
Mao Zedong said in the 1950’s: “600
million people [...] are poor and blank. [...]
On a blank sheet of paper, free of flaws,
the freshest and most beautiful characters
can be written. The freshest and most
beautiful pictures can be painted.” (Mao
1958)
This tradition is obviously still alive.
5.3 Surveillance
The Social Credit System does not create
any additional surveillance, although it
profits from the existing and expanding
surveillance system. In China, cameras in
public spaces are almost omnipresent.
When asked about the many cameras,
people react instantly with the official
reasoning that the more cameras there are,
the safer the place. Traffic rule violations
and other violations often are caught on
camera and then analyzed for their
relevance in regards of the social credit
system (Louvet 2019).
There are discussions on how far eye-
tracking of elementary school students
during class, mobility trackers and other
tracking apps for them and elderly people,
can be used by teachers, relatives and
others. However, there is also a growing
civil resistance against overboarding
surveillance.
As part of the general surveillance and not
as part of the Social Credit System, even in
school and university classrooms there are
cameras. Foreign lecturers are currently
told in job selection interviews: “Your
predecessor in the position of foreign
lecturer had expressed political

WOESLER/WARNKE/KETTNER/LANFER. THE CHINESE SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM. EJCS 2 (2019) 7 - 35 19
criticism of the system in class and was
dismissed without notice”. Nevertheless,
foreign lecturers are not yet required to
undergo ideological training and do not
have to become a party member or
participate in party events. Funding
applications for them, however, often
contain statements by the party secretary.
Foreign companies in China also have to
offer the office next to the company
director to the party committee.
But what about the situation for the
Chinese, whose evaluated data in turn feed
into the ideological tutoring or ideology
sessions for students, or ideology sessions
and training for faculty? The weekly
ideology-centered sessions are often about
studying the issues set forth by the
leadership as well as self-reflection, self-
criticism, honest repentance, and promises
to do better. In fact, “self-criticism” has a
solid ground in the PRC (for the tradition
of “self-criticism” with its peak during the
‘Cultural Revolution’ see Dittmer 1973).
When self-criticism is combined with
insights gained from data collection, a new
level of communication has certainly been
reached, that of media epoch 5.0 following
Luhmann and Baecker (where 1.0 is orality,
2.0 script, 3.0 printing techniques, and 4.0
digitization). In media epoch 5.0 (term
coined by Martin Woesler) the value of a
communicative act does not consist any
more out of the messages exchanged, but
out of the analysis gained by algorithms to
complete the personality profile of the
participants involved in the communicative
act. The human participant becomes an
object of analysis with the first aim being
to classify the underlying values, beliefs
etc., the second aim that of predicting
future behavior and the third aim that of
changing this behavior and the underlying
thoughts through priming, manipulation
etc. towards the behavior and the
underlying thoughts deemed more
profitable to the group of people
controlling the algorithms. The paradigm
shifts from causes and results to
correlations and predictions.
Chinese students receive 10% of their
tuition in so-called 'core courses', in which
ideology is taught in addition to sports. In
addition, everyone has their tutor, often an
older student, who watches for the
expected ideological attitude.
In this controlled, steered world in a filter
bubble, it would be hard to imagine a scene
like the one that took place at universities
in the PRC in 1989. Back then, fellow

20 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CHINESE STUDIES 2 (2019)
students came into the classroom and
asked everyone to join the demonstrations.
The regulations by the police chief from
Xinjiang for education camps, which were
leaked under the “China Cables,” regard
repentance and self-criticism as essential
for inmates.
The relationship between the individual
and society is also strengthened by
emotions, with the poles of fear at one end
and of longing for happiness at the other.
The data gained by surveillance is analyzed
using Big Data techniques and correlations
are found. A profile is created that
translates into both a threat level (the
closer a person gets to 100%, the deeper is
the color red which appears in the police's
facial recognition goggles) and a poor
social credit score.
Figure 5: Face recognition with pop-up boxes with
danger potential (Wuollet 2018).
Based on these correlations, the algorithms
make decisions about individuals. The PRC
approach even attempts to take control of
minds, generally believed to be the last
bastion of free will. Artificial intelligence is
apparently targeting values, dreams, beliefs
and political views.
Here lies the qualitative difference between
the PRC approach to control minds by
means of intrusive surveillance measures
analyzed by Big Data techniques and large
IT companies in the developed world
collecting data for commercial purposes, to
learn about purchasing behavior rather
than system-stabilizing or -labeling
behavior.
It is unclear to what extent such a
technology could work. It even sounds like
the dream of surveillance fanatics.
Nonetheless, basal affects, attention levels,
a neurosensory dead man's button, all these
are within the realm of possibility.
Figure 6: Brain scanners, Chen 2018.

WOESLER/WARNKE/KETTNER/LANFER. THE CHINESE SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM. EJCS 2 (2019) 7 - 35 21
Knowing that the devices you are wearing
have such functionality also has an effect
on individual behavior and psycho-
emotional disposition. Shanghai technology
company Deayea has confirmed that train
drivers on the Shanghai-Beijing line, for
example, regularly wear these brain
scanners. (Chen 2018). Future study on the
efforts of these brain scanners on the
mental and physical health of these train
drivers will illuminate further the tension
between state control and authenticity of
the individual.
Figure 7: Worker in a Shanghai Factory with work
helmets, in which brain scanners were implemented
(Chen 2018).
5.4 Actions
Social media is censored in real time both
with algorithms and manually. In the
process, any expression of opinion with
potential for collective action is censored.
That is, the algorithm bases its decision
solely on whether something can become
hype, not whether it is politically albeling
(“hype control,” see King 2014,
Hiruncharoenvate 2017, Sauer 2018). The
results are directly translated into sanctions
(see catalogs of sanctions e.g. in figure 8
and in Woesler 2021), which are mainly
aimed at limiting the ability to move or act.
This can make the individual's situation
even worse. If, for example, someone is
punished for not visiting her or his parents
who live far away and s/he is no longer
allowed to buy airplane or train tickets, a
vicious cycle could result.
Catalog of stick and carrot
In 2020, the final version of the SCS went
into effect. Prior to that, private companies
applied to get the commissioning to
develop the SCS with eight different
variants of the system designed as an
“application”, with the best-known being
Alibaba's Sesame Credit System and
Tencent's system.
Regional trials of the SCS also use slightly
different scoring bases and point levels.
Ultimately, however, they are very similar.

22 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CHINESE STUDIES 2 (2019)
In the final version of the SCS, the list of
rewards cited include preference in
government visits, visa applications (to
Singapore, for example), insurance
premiums, credit rates and levels, access to
luxury hotels, educational pathways, and
government offices.
The catalog of punishments mentioned are:
the display of personal data such as photos
or names in public spaces, (for example, in
Shanghai at certain street intersections to
deter pedestrians from ignoring traffic
lights and on websites; the display of full
names on black lists accessible e.g. on
http://www.creditchina. gov.cn), general
restriction of mobility, (such as the denial
of airline tickets and train tickets);
prohibition of entering public places with
cell phone alerts, etc.; effects on lending,
jobs, and so on. Even clan detention is not
uncommon in the PRC.
Figure 8 is a systematic illustration from the Wall
Street Journal (McAllister 2019):
Figure 8: McAllister 2019.
Figure 9: “Public Shaming” is a common method in
the PRC, as is shown in this app, which displays 119
people in the surrounding with full names (here
partly anonymized), who owe debts. (Chris 2019).
6. Acceptance
Surveillance of the population of the
People's Republic of China is carried out

WOESLER/WARNKE/KETTNER/LANFER. THE CHINESE SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM. EJCS 2 (2019) 7 - 35 23
blatantly and in full visibility to all. What
seems unthinkable in the liberal
democracies of the West (where it takes
place more secretly, to a lesser degree and
on a much narrower group of individuals),
seems to be generally tolerated in the PRC.
In fact, the acceptance of surveillance is
more widespread than it is in the developed
world.
According to a survey conducted by Freie
Universität in Berlin (Kostka 2018), the
Chinese are satisfied with surveillance,
ideological brainwashing, and the social
credit system. Although some of this
satisfaction may be due to brainwashing,
they give several reasons for their
satisfaction. The general sentiment is that
“I have done nothing wrong. Besides,
when bad guys get caught, I feel safer.
Above all, it will improve our society”.
Figure 10: Free University of Berlin survey,
February-April 2018, n:2209 Chinese internet users.
(Kostka 2018).
A survey in the UK yields an unexpected
result. If the SCS also existed in the UK,
the majority of British people would end
their online friendships if it improved their
score.

24 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CHINESE STUDIES 2 (2019)
Figure 11: Survey by ABC Finance Ltd. in Great
Britain (Hemming 2019[?]).
But a survey in Germany reveals that most
citizens in this country reject the SCS.
Figure 12: Survey of the Sinus Institute / YouGov,
Online-Interviews representative for Germany 18-
49 years, n=2036, February 4, 2019 (Inhoffen
2019).
Although data protection and data security
are at the forefront of Western values,
there is an incentive in some quarters to
follow the Chinese path. The control
system has proven to be more successful
economically, and the need for security,
unsurprisingly, leans towards a surveillance
system. The Corona pandemic does the
rest. In view of the considerable successes
of Far Eastern digital surveillance
technology, Western, especially German,
data protection is under increasing
pressure.
7. Discussion
Behaviorism 2.0 ?
The psychological mechanisms of
punishments and rewards in the SCS have
a striking similarity to the Weltbild of
Burrhus F. Skinner’s “behaviourism”, the
once famous learning-theory paradigm of
“operant” (or “instrumental”) conditioning
that dominated American academic psy-
chology between 1930 and 1960. Skinneri-
an behaviorism with its rigorous exclusion
of the first-person perspective and its ban
on intentional entities (e.g., feelings,
thoughts, beliefs, values, reasons) turned
out to be too reductive and simplistic with
regard to many momentous issues within
scientific psychology, psychotherapy, and
pedagogy, and lost terrain due to the “cog-
nitive revolution” of cognitive science and,
within an altogether different tradition of
scientific psychology, to psychoanalysis.
In order to assess the normative properties
of an SCS that make it an action-guiding
regime, let us compare it to common
morality (Gert 2005) and its normative
properties. The SCS ostensibly represents
ethical standards and norms, including
common morality, e.g. moral rules like “do

WOESLER/WARNKE/KETTNER/LANFER. THE CHINESE SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM. EJCS 2 (2019) 7 - 35 25
not lie”, “do not cheat”, “respect the law”,
“do your duty”. Yet other kinds of stan-
dards and norms can also be inserted into
the scope of SCS’s compliance engendering
power – for instance, politically desired
standards and norms. The content of an
SCS’s compliance engendering power can
be selectively programmed at the will of
the governments that deploy SCSs for
shaping the behavior of their citizens as
they deem fit.
Another interesting difference between the
action-guiding force of motivationally
internalized common morality and the
action-guiding force of an SCS is that the
former is subject to the constraints of
rationality only in a weak sense (to act in
morally right ways must not be irrational)
whereas the latter is subject to strong
negative constraints of prudential
rationality (to act non-compliantly must be
irrational). In comparison to social ethics
and common morality, SCSs function more
like positive laws with sanctions, and they
prioritize a sense of conformity with any
social convention that gets incorporated
into the social credit point system and
therefore is highlighted as being relevant
for the stability of law and order in society.
Functionally, we can compare the SCS to
an exoskeleton. This metaphor seems apt
here: Similar to a physical or technical
exoskeleton, the SCS is an apparatus that is
external to the person and is designed with
the purpose to support and amplify a
person’s motivation for compliance with
rules (here: compliance with rules that the
government deems wise to program into
the SCS) if the person’s intrinsic
motivation turns out to be too weak for
complying properly.
Note the dynamic nature of Chinese
society, its rapid growth, disruptive cultural
developments, partial cultural lags,
normative fragmentation due to cultural
simultaneity of asynchronous cultural
elements, and, in particular, note the
cardinal importance of avoiding what
sociologists like Emile Durkheim and
Robert Merton diagnosed as “anomie”.
Anomie is social-pathological condition
within society: Anomie means massive
weakening or serious lack of well-
entrenched social norms (moral and
otherwise) that most members of the
respective society find attractive to
integrate into their self-conception and into
their ideals of what living good lives should
be. By being vital to the self-integration of

26 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CHINESE STUDIES 2 (2019)
the majority of members of a society, such
norms, by the same token, are vital to the
social integration of the respective society
and its paramount institutions (cf.
Heitmeyer 2008, Powell 1970). Hence, the
occurrence of anomie threatens peaceful
and sustainable social integration, and
politically ought to be avoided.
Output legitimation vs. input legitima-
tion
Democratic constitutional states also claim
to have developed digitization to a network
society, a “digital democracy” in order to
strengthen what political theorists call
input legitimation. These societies expand
public discourse through social media,
especially through microblogging. They
foster an awareness of alternatives to
established ways of life, political
arrangements, and the status quo. With
reference to civil society, digitization
provides tools that contribute to
maintaining a sense of civic freedoms, e.g.
the freedom of association and freedom of
expression.
Digitization can become a powerful motor
of dynamic differentiations. Via massive
digitization, pre-modern structures can be
modernized at great pace. Societies that
have not yet developed, over a long
historical period, certain valuable traits of
modern societies (esp. political publics,
democratic governance, rule of law,
division of state powers) can do so more
quickly by harnessing, in the right way, the
forces of digitization.
European style Parliamentary democracies
are concerned not only with their input-
legitimacy but with their output-legitimacy
as well. In output legitimacy, the focus is
on political achievements in solving social
problems. Citizens ultimately decide on the
basis of output whether to re-elect or to
dismiss the government in the next cycle of
general elections. The relationship between
input and output is ensured by democratic
institutions, by control instances (parlia-
ments, opposition, media, courts) and by
political parties as responsive intermedia-
ries between citizens’ demands and the
values and decisions of politics.
Even though democratic constitutional
states are increasingly focusing on output
(post-democracy), there are clear
differences from the PRC. The PRC is pur-
suing digitization for purely performance-
based, output-fixated, social cybernetics.
Typical of authoritarian systems, output

WOESLER/WARNKE/KETTNER/LANFER. THE CHINESE SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM. EJCS 2 (2019) 7 - 35 27
legitimacy is thus predominant for the
PRC. There is state regulation and control
or censorship of the offline and online
world via algorithms and transparent social
rankings. The use of behavior modification
techniques leads to extensive self-
disciplining and self-regulation
(instrumental power - Zuboff 2019), which,
in China, is tied to the supreme goal – to
ensure the long term centralization of
political power by the communist party.
The PRC pursues the social-cybernetic
strategy to secure domination by the party.
‘Governance by Algorithm’ (Musiani 2013)
thus forms the only strategy. A ‘governance
of algorithm’ that digitizes the rule of law
(which is not yet sufficiently developed
even in democratic constitutional states),
contradicts the political logic of the PRC,
which pursues a rule by law.
Conclusion
A Great Leap Forward in Virtue of
Digitization?
China aspires to become the world leader
in digital infrastructure and in the
application of artificial intelligence. This
aspiration, plus the prestige connected to
the vastly ambitious Silk Road project, has
made it seem attractive to try to export
digital SCS technology (e.g., to Cambodia,
Sri Lanka, Poland, Chile). Many states have
placed requests for the system. A SCS-
system has even been recommended to
France (Louvet 2019). All this raises the
question; Are global political weights being
shifted? Is this the dawning of a new age of
cyberneticly supported statecraft? Can
there be state capitalism without
constitutionality characterized by economic
neo liberalism? What does all this have to
do with the digital?
It would truly be a significant leap forward,
possibly even a successful one this time, if
digital technology led to a rapprochement
between, or even reconciliation of,
socialism and capitalism, and if a former
developing country could rise to become a
global economic leader, if the transition
from the third world to a digital first world
succeeded. The SCS could certainly play an
important role in this.
It is debatable whether the digital
transformation of technicized societies
based on the Internet already marks a post-
modern era, or whether these
developments are an unfolding completion
of modernity itself (Eposito 2002:287 ff).
Terms that were introduced to describe

28 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CHINESE STUDIES 2 (2019)
modern society, which was, and is, still
characterized by the printing press, must
first of all be used to describe the new
conditions with a tried and tested
repertoire of terms, because we do not yet
have appropriate newer ones. For Elena
Esposito, it is also the argument for still
speaking of our times, including those in
China, as modern:
Since we have so far dealt with a
model characteristic of modernity, it is
obvious to speak now of an
investigation in the field of
postmodernity [...]. This labeling is all
the more significant because it reveals,
more than in any other case, the
ambiguous characteristic of the
concept of postmodernity, and
precisely through its connotations of
succession, of overcoming, and
ultimately of novelty, it belongs to the
conceptual apparatus of modernity
(which is, after all, virtually obsessed
with novelty and change). The talk of
postmodernism thus remains within
modernity and confines itself to
merely giving it a new term. (Eposito
2002:287, transl. M. Woesler)
But that would be impressive enough if the
PRC does succeed in making a leap from a
pre-modern society into the digital future
of humankind!
The concept of protocol is a key concept
for understanding communication in the
internet and digital information processing
more generally. Alexander Galloway
described how our society has reached its
current stage of development under the
rule of protocols:
“How would control exist after
decentralization? In former times control
was a little easier to explain. In what Michel
Foucault called the sovereign societies of
the classical era, characterized by
centralized power and sovereign fiat,
control existed as an extension of the word
and deed of the master, assisted by
violence and other coercive factors. Later,
the disciplinary societies of the modern era
took hold, replacing violence with more
bureaucratic forms of command and
control. […] Deleuze has extended this
periodization into the present day by
suggesting that after the disciplinary
societies come the societies of control”.
(Galloway 2004:3) “[P]rotocol is how
technological control exists after
decentralization.” (Galloway 2004:8)
Control and power are maintained via
protocols. The SCS provides a pertinent

WOESLER/WARNKE/KETTNER/LANFER. THE CHINESE SOCIAL CREDIT SYSTEM. EJCS 2 (2019) 7 - 35 29
example of what such power can amount
to.
Protocols as instruments of power
characterize what Deleuze called societies
of control that replaced what Foucault had
analyzed as disciplinary societies: “You
don’t need science fiction to imagine a
control mechanism that indicates at every
moment the position of an element in an
open milieu, animal in a reserve, human in
a company (electronic collar). Felix
Guattari imagined a city in which everyone
could leave his apartment, his street, his
neighborhood thanks to his electronic
(divisional) card, through which this or that
barrier opens; but the card could also be
invalid on a certain day or for certain
hours; what counts is not the barrier, but
the computer that detects the position -
allowed or not - of each individual and
performs a universal modulation.” What
sounded like science fiction in 1990 has
long since become, and even surpasses,
such a reality.
It is protocols like the SCS that provide
control of people and institutions (Warnke
2019). With Galloway, we think that such
regimes of control appeal more to desire
(and fear) than to reflective reason:
“Protocol is not a superego (like the
police); instead it always operates at the
level of desire, at the level of ‘what we
want’.” (Galloway 2002:241). We want to
be connected, to communicate, to travel, to
consume, and if we score too low, a SCS
would excludes us from all these goods: we
become immobile, cut off, and finally even
excluded from the community of our
cultural peers.
Note also that protocols act impersonally.
No one can be blamed for an operation of
exclusion, not even any party functionary
in particular. Technic protocols function
anonymously, impartially and, if you will,
ruthlessly. A properly implemented and
reasonably programmed SCS may therefore
be a viable means for curbing rampant
corruption.
Niklas Luhmann characterizes the media
epoch (which supersedes the epoch of the
book and the printing press) by its leading
medium, the computer. Computers split
the perceptible into a surface and an
immeasurable depth. Communication using
computers deactivates the interpretative act
of distinguishing a message from its
information: to the computer, everything is
just data. The act of understanding or
misunderstanding, inherent in human
communication and so tremendously

30 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CHINESE STUDIES 2 (2019)
productive, collapses into a data processing
that no longer has the intermediate tones
of creative communication between
humans. It merely operationalizes only
digital analysis and correlation-based
decisions by algorithms to social operation
or its rejection (Luhmann 1997:302ff, cf.
Baecker 2007). However, in our present
media epoch – call it 5.0 – artificial
intelligence tackles the last resorts of
humanness, like thoughts with
consciousness and (self-)awareness, values,
beliefs as well as (emotional) personalities,
reflected in profiles, avatars and
simulations.
Small wonder that a behaviorist, cybernetic,
ethic seems to be the appropriate one for
such a society.
If humanity wants to survive, it needs to
master the new technologies, if only
because certain techniques of digitally
amplified surveillance might prove
necessary in order to prevent digitally
enhanced terrorism set at erasing human
civilization. The question simply is,
whether or not humanity wants to use its
newly acquired digital powers to stabilize
the central governing political agency of a
nation by providing exoskeletons to the
citizens, or to find mechanisms that permit
as much individual freedom as possible and
pose only as few restrictions as are
necessary. Why not employ digitization in
what is truly the general interest of all
individuals and groups – the interest in
realizing a sustainable future for humanity?
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Baecker, Dirk. 2007. Studien zur nächsten
Gesellschaft. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am
Main
Bamman, David, Brendan O'Connor, and
Noah Smith. 2012. "Censorship and
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Acknowledgements
This paper is intended to be part of the
discourse on system comparison between
China and the EU (and other systems) and
benefited from the following support:
Bertelsmann Foundation (non-material
support in the form of the implementation
of a workshop on system comparison),
corresponding researcher: Martin Woesler,
participants: Matthias Kettner, Jens Lanfer
German Science Foundation Researchers’
College “Media Cultures of Computer
Simulation”, research project no.
221949125, Directors: Martin Warnke,
Claus Pias
European Commission, Grant Agreement
No. 620942, “EU Studies Chair - Multilevel
experiences from the EU integration
process, from EU intercultural and
multilingual communication and coope-
ration”, Hunan Normal University, Martin
Woesler
European Commission, EU Horizon 2020,
grant agreement no. 740934 “TRIVA-
LENT”, Funding program SEC-06-FCT-
2016, co-applicant 2/21 (third party, with
PIC 999854079), 2016-2020, Wit-
ten/Herdecke University Coordinator:
Martin Woesler
Red Hen Lab, Case Western Reserve, USA,
and Hunan Normal University