from Part II - The Social Credit System
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 November 2025
This chapter delves into the implications of citizen participation in commercial SCS for their support of the state’s digital policies. Unlike the focus on general political trust in Chapter 5, the attention here now turns to assessing support for a specific digital policy. This chapter finds that citizens are highly supportive of state, compared to company, involvement in managing the SCS. It explores potential explanations such as media exposure, social interaction, and potential network effects. However, high levels of state support can only be fully understood once how people experience policy implementation on the ground is taken into account. When these experiences are mostly financial in nature, individuals are more likely to believe that the chances of their data being used for political purposes is low. Therefore, they become more supportive of the state’s involvement in the SCS overall. For most citizens, a primarily financially oriented SCS is acceptable, but its use as a political tool is not.
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