Zhima Credit – Keys to a Better Life

On 14 June 2014, China's State Council issued an outline for the establishment of a national Social Credit System (SCS). Slated to be fully implemented by 2020, the SCS will be a national reputation system with records of each citizen assessed in 4 primary areas, "honesty in government affairs, commercial integrity, societal integrity and judicial credibility" (Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System (2014-2020)). Although modeled after the Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO) credit scoring system, China’s SCS has evolved beyond a measure of credit-worthiness to a measure of an individual’s citizen-worthiness. Despite being in the infancy of its application, the political effects of ‘Zhima Credit’, as implemented by Ant Financial Services Group (AFSG) (the e-payment arm of the Alibaba corporation) has already altered the balance of power between the government, citizens, and corporations (Creemers). With propriety algorithms that score based on data gathered from individual’s daily activities, this policy and the technological means of its enforcement hints at the rise of a computational theocracy as outlined by political technologies. In my essay, I plan to offer a brief description of this phenomenon and in doing so to decide on which theory best describes this phenomenon as a whole.

“It will allow the trustworthy to roam freely under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.” (Gonzalez)

The SCS was implemented to combat three primary issues. First, to establish a system of trust and social stability between individuals, corporations and the government; this is achieved through a creation a “culture of sincerity” or “transparency” that discourages the flouting of the law with the threat of a ‘blacklist’ with far-reaching future consequences. Second, to generate economic growth, with China moving from a model of external consumption to internal consumption, a credit rating system will facilitate the disbursement of loans that will drive future economic growth. Lastly, as a means of centralized recordkeeping, fragmented into provinces then further into districts and then cities, China’s sheer size creates problems of oversight for its central governance (Creemers). However, the SCS allows the government direct access to a centralized database that contains details of an individual’s track record regardless of their location, allowing for criminals to be tracked across the nation and eliminating inaccurate record-keeping by dishonest officials that doctor regional data to suit their needs. Despite these benefits and ‘good’ intentions, the centralized control of data positions the SCS as highly compatible with repressive authoritarianism; that when employed in conjunction with the government’s Foucauldian practices, legitimizes the invasion of individual privacy under the moniker that ‘only the guilty have something to hide’. Supported by a framework of Close Circuit Televisions (CCTV) enabled with facial recognition software, individuals will have nowhere to hide from government surveillance, locked in a technological panopticon monitored and judged for their every move (Media). Reminiscent of an Orwellian ‘1984’, the SCS also serves to enforce a social governance that encourages people to police themselves with society serving swift punishment to those who are deemed as poor citizens, leading to a culture of fear and distrust, opposite of what the SCS intends to create.

“In China, Three Digits could determine your fate.” (Nast)

Contrary to media reports, the governmental policy of the Social Credit System did not necessitate the feature of a ‘score’ (Creemers), however, this features strongly in AFSG’s implementation of Zhima Credit. One of the eight companies contracted by the Chinese government to trial their own private scoring systems based off the SCS, Zhima Credit as adopted by 200 million users since 2017 (Nast) is an amalgamation of a private credit scoring and a loyalty program system made possible with data from the widespread use of the third-party cashless payment ‘Superapp’ Alipay’s 520 million users. An example of platform politics, Alipay is an ecosystem unto itself, with functions ranging from food delivery to credit card repayment and even social networking, Alipay allows one to navigate urban living without ever (technically) having to leave your couch. A ‘credit for everything in your life’, Zhima Credit’s algorithm considers the timeliness of bills repayment, what you buy, and more controversially the scores of your friends and your social media activity with regards to the government in tabulating an individual’s score, a score that people have come to identify themselves and others with.

“Zhima credit will open doors for you” (Nast)

Zhima credit (which mean ‘Sesame’ in English, the same ‘Sesame’ in ‘Open Sesame’) will open doors for you. Scored out of 800, individuals with high scores are deemed trustworthy and are entitled to privileges such as deposit-free car or bike rentals, priority booking of hotels and even skipping security checks at the airport. Whereas on the flip side, those with low scores are deemed untrustworthy and are locked out of society, barred from traveling and receiving loans, placed under effective house arrest, discriminated by society, unable to improve their score and forced to live as a second-class citizen (Creemers). A modern-day class system determined by a computational theocracy leads individuals to devote their lives to the pursuit of a higher score, following religiously the straight and narrow of singing praises of the government and engaging in communion with other devouts who consecrate themselves as productive members of society, as guided by the precepts of Zhima Credit. A religion with vague rules, the factors that determine an individual’s score are unknown, calculated in an algorithmic black box which Alibaba claims to be proprietary and hence unreleased to the public (Brehm and Loubere). This uncertainty of internal validity in score tabulation highlights the dangers of algorithmic determinism, in that a company’s values system may in time shape societal sensibilities. However, a more pressing issue is the quantification of an individual’s worth, with the SCS, an individual becomes “dividual” identified by both the government and each other as nothing more than a three-digit score, a score that would determine their fate (and class) as a citizen of the Republic of China.

Theories of political technologies tend to carry with them negative connotations, decrying the SCS to be another means of oppression. However, it’s (unfortunately) not actually doing anything new in the authoritarian nation that already engages in censorship, surveillance and human rights violations (Watch). In fact, a social governance may allow for those deserving to be rewarded for their practice of good citizenship. Not designed to be inherently political, the SCS was created as a means of tracking criminals and driving economic growth, it is by the hand of corporations and government that this technology becomes so. Despite evidence of a possible computational theocracy, Zhima credit is but one trial in eight, bound to be fraught with errors, an inaccurate representation of a true SCS. Seeing that it’s still a corporate-backed system interwoven with elements of a reward system, the SCS as implemented by the government will (hopefully) be written to serve a more social function, with its lines of computing code a metaphor akin to the lines of code as written in state laws.

Despite which, the Social Credit System and Social Credit Score are fundamentally two very different systems inextricably linked. One being a goal and the other being its means, both phenomena are possibly explained by theories of political technologies and computational theocracy respectively. However, if forced to choose, political technologies would best explain this phenomenon, as in its purest form, the Social Credit System redistributes power and access between governments and citizens. It is in the implementation a computationally-determined score that hints at a computational theocracy; technologies are (for now) constrained within the guidelines of politics.

Understandably, we must be reflexive of the media we consume, keeping in mind that much of the reportage on this phenomenon is sensationalized and framed by western media, which reports for a different audience and is at its core, a product of an individualistic culture with values very different from China’s own collectivistic one. Ironically, the lack of objective sources from local news agencies could be accounted for by a ‘Spiral of Silence’ created by the SCS, in that any negative comments on the system will invite swift societal and governmental sanctions. Regardless, the lack of alternative perspectives warns us to maintain a cautious distance of the proclamations of Orwellian, dystopian futures predicted in western media. Taking the cultural view of communication, we too should guard against ethnocentrism, staying cognizant of the symbolic realities we create, inhabit and perpetuate all while endeavoring to understand, rather than judge, a culture from within.

Works Cited

• Brehm, Stefan and Nicholas Loubere. The Conversation: China’s dystopian social credit system is a harbinger of the global age of the algorithm. 19 September 2018. Web. 07 November 2018.

• Creemers, Rogier. "China's Social Credit System: An Evolving Practice of Control." SSRN Electronic Journal (2018). Web.

• Gonzalez, Miren. Under China's Social Credit System, cameras and apps grade citizens' every move in real time – high scorers get rewarded and low scorers get punished. 26 September 2018. Web. 07 November 2018. <http://theindependent.sg/under-chinas-social-credit-system-cameras-and-apps-grade-citizens-every-move-in-real-time-high-scorers-get-rewarded-and-low-scorers-get-punished/>.

• Media, Masters of. China's Social Credit System could bring George Orwell's 1984 character 'Big Brother' to life by allowing Big Data Surveillance to control Chinese public life. 23 September 2018. Web. 07 November 2018.

• Nast, Conde. In China, a Three-Digit Score Could Dictate Your Place in Society. 14 December 2017. Web. 01 11 2018. <https://www.wired.com/story/age-of-social-credit/>.

• Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System (2014-2020). 14 June 2014. Web. 04 11 2018. <chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/planning-outline-for-the-construction-of-a-social-credit-system-2014-2020/.>.

• Times, The Financial. Chinese Fintech's Global Future Is Arriving Now. 21 May 2018. Web. 04 November 2018. <www.ft.com/content/0f0b9b82-5ce0-11e8-9334-2218e7146b04.>.

• Watch, Human Rights. World Report 2018: Rights Trends in China. 18 January 2018. Web. 07 November 2018.