Towards Legislating The Social Credit System

In 2014,the PRC's central government formally declared the construction of a Social Credit System a national task.Since then,government-designated localities and companies are experimenting with scoring systems for businesses,private citizens and administrative entities.The impact of the system in terms of which actions it takes into account and in terms of the outreach of awards and punishments is even at this early stage unprecedented.The system demands that personal and commercial privacy be compromised for possible advantages in public service,preferred treatment by businesses,and for a faster and more efficient enforcement of law.Despite this possibly huge impact on private and commercial life,a national legal framework for the system does not yet exist,it remains purely executive-driven.This thesis aims to bring to light questions that arise for Social Credit System legislators at the central level.It conducts an analysis of the regulations passed by the local People,s Congresses of pilot provinces and municipalities and an observation of experiences from the public and commercial pilots.This analysis shows that national legislators will firstly have to define clearly the very term "(un)trustworthiness" in order to then clarify which actions are relevant to social credit,and where the line to criminal law is and whether rewarding by the state is to become part of it.Secondly,privacy protection and safeguards for credit subjects have to be addressed,as to combat technical and systemic mistakes both of which are most likely to occur given the complexity of a unified Social Credit System as planned.Further,only through strong safeguards for subjects will it be possible to effectively combat abuse and corruption in the System's management.Thirdly,the analysis finds that the impact of the system indeed reaches so far that the mere enactment of one national law,as it exists on provincial level for the pilot systems,cannot solve the numerous issues that arise.Such a law had to reach far into several different areas and would collide with already existing laws.Rather,a careful consideration of a number of issues in all legal areas concerned is necessary to appropriately legislate a project as vast as the Social Credit System.