Sorting citizens: Governing via China's social credit system

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hou, Rui; Fu, Diana
• 署名单位: University of Toronto; University of Toronto
• 刊物名称: GOVERNANCE-AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF POLICY ADMINISTRATION AND INSTITUTIONS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0952-1895
• DOI: 10.1111/gove.12751
• 发表日期: 2024
• 关键词: civil-society; TRANSITION

摘要

China's social credit system can be examined as a governance tool which sorts citizenship behaviors into trustworthy and untrustworthy categories as part of the regime's long-standing effort to cultivate a loyal citizenry. Based on a data set comprised of central-level official documents, national model citizen lists, and media reports, this study qualitatively examines how the Chinese state constructs good and bad citizen ideal types. Contrary to media depictions of the system as digital totalitarianism, political behaviors are not the sole criterion for sorting citizens into categories. In fact, the state constructs bad (untrustworthy) citizens as those who engage in a wide range of behaviors, including financial and professional misconduct. Simultaneously, the state also uses the system to construct and cultivate good (trustworthy) citizens as those who publicly demonstrate loyalty to the regime. Theoretically, this study sheds light on how the world's most powerful authoritarian regime governs through a system that distributes material and symbolic capital.