China has a ‘social credit’ scoring system that is being widely trialled before it is adopted nationwide. In Hangzhou and through Shandong, gold stars and black marks have begun to shape public and private behaviours.

This could be you: mural depicting Alibaba Group Holding Ltd chairman Jack Ma (left) on the Great Wall, displayed in the Alibaba Museum in December 2018 Qilai Shen · Bloomberg · Getty

We were near the entrance of the No 1 People’s Hospital of Hangzhouin Zhejiang province, south west of Shanghai. An old woman who seemed to be waiting for a taxi suddenly climbed over the roadside barrier, leaned over the hood of a German car, jumped up, then sat down on the ground, arms crossed. The frantic young driver got out and went up to her. They argued for an hour in front of nurses and a passing policeman until they agreed on damages.

Chinese online video platforms show many incidents of peng ci (touching porcelain), where people fling themselves onto cars to claim damages. They can be funny, more often they’re dramatic. These extortions, plus scams in health, food and counterfeit goods, make people angry and help explain why they are prepared to accept any government measures that claim to end them.

The most important measure is the new ‘social credit’ surveillance system. Since last summer, words like honesty (cheng) and credibility (xin) have appeared on propaganda posters which accompany a growing panoply of public and private mechanisms that assess individuals, officials, businesses and professional sectors, reward the good and punish the bad.

Lin Junyue, a researcher from Beijing, has worked on such a system since 1999, when he was appointed chief engineer for a new team set up at the request of the then prime minister, Zhu Rongji. Lin said: ‘American companies asked Zhu to create tools to provide them with more information on the Chinese companies they wanted to work with. I made several study trips to the US with my colleagues and we realised that we had to create something even better: a solid system for documenting the creditworthiness of Chinese citizens and enterprises. Our report “Towards a National System of Credit Management” came out in March 2000, just before the two national assemblies were held. The term “social credit” followed in 2002, when an official suggested a lexical symmetry with social (...)