The Rise of the Data State: China’s Social Credit System

Abstract

Data has been said as the currency fueling modern digital economy. The modern data engine has propelled societal development beyond the economic and marketing terrains. With advancing technology in big data analytics, algorithm and artificial intelligence, the power and potential of digital data has a special appeal to political rulers. If data embodies power, then controlling data becomes critical to the effective exercise of political power, or even supreme power. In fact, control through technology by the state has been a constant theme, central to the working, of modern society. Yet with increasing datification of our daily lives, control comes from ourselves who have unwittingly or voluntarily contributed information about our own lives into the data ecosystem. Our activities, desires, social networks and habits have then been captured by online networks. We have contributed to the growing use of data analytics, facilitating the state to score, profile and identify us for surveillance and punishment, evaluation and exclusion. Our online existence has a direct impact on the rights, interests, or even legal personality that we have in real life. Our proxy data selves have redefined and overtaken our real selves. More troubling is that we have become dependent on the surveillance system and can ill afford to severe our livelihood from it. This study focuses on China, using it as a case study to examine the intricacies and dynamics of control in a data state. It identifies the distinctive features of building a data state as (1) close cooperation between the state and private sectors; (2) legitimacy building through moral narratives, social norms and legal rules; (3) the use of cost and benefits incentives to allure citizens to join the data ecosystem; (4) creation of the proxy data selves and measurement of all aspects of a person’s lives; (5) joint punishment that binds the data selves to all aspects of a person’s life; and (6) defiance of a rights regime into social sorting. The ultimate goal of the state is to attain total control from above and complete obedience from below. This obedience comes not only from the disciplinary force external or internal, but also from our needs of survival. We have no choice but to play our role for survival. Ironically, we are the one who have spun thousands of webs to capture our own selves.