In a lengthy 2022 report by the Mercator Institute for China Studies, “China’s Social Credit System in 2021: From fragmentation towards integration,” the Institute notes that private enterprises are often eager to cooperate with the agenda of the totalitarian state.
The government still supports the tech sector’s collection of information and use of innovative scoring systems. Above all, there are subtle political gains in the tech sector’s use of highly aligned language on “trust” or “credit.” The messaging to consumers who receive preferential treatment for being trustworthy has a strong habituation and training effect, contributing to the overall vision of a “trust-based” society, in which everybody willingly follows the government’s rules.
At the same time, China’s tech giants remain keen on getting in on the action. They hope to profit from the new drive to integrate data and make it accessible for automated big data and AI-aided interpretation across all the areas outlined above: from SoCS [social credit system] and digital governance to state surveillance. Even a cursory look at calls for bids and advertisements by China’s main tech firms show that they are eager to promote their capabilities in cross-system data and platform integration. A variety of major Chinese companies have already won bids for the construction of SoCS data platforms.
Of course, it’s fine for companies to use various means, from reviews to rating systems, to “build trust” with respect to things like product quality, a manifestation of the conduct of companies, or bill paying, a manifestation of the conduct of customers. The problem is cooperation with the statist social-control agenda, as if a proper “trust-based society” were a society in which people by and large obey the dictator and his subalterns in every realm of life. The best that can be said of those who operate such obedience-promoting firms is that they are cooperating only out of fear. But many of these managers convince themselves that they are cooperating out of virtue.
