While the blacklist-redlist and JSR regime does not involve computing scores of any sort, some city governments are experimenting with using credit information to generate scores that assess a citizens’ level of promise keeping. In 2018, Suqian and Suzhou in Jiangsu province, Hangzhou in Zhejiang province, and Xiamen and Fuzhou in Fujian province, all relatively prosperous cities on the east coast, rolled out city-level personal credit scores (个人信用评分).
The scoring system is highly experimental at this stage but the in-depth case studies I have previously undertaken of Xiamen’s Bailu score and Fuzhou’s Moli score reveal the general design.
Both cities assign a score from 0-1000 to each citizen as a reflection of their ‘adherence to laws, promise keeping, and credit in daily life’. The scores, accessed by citizens via smartphone apps, are computed using models not dissimilar to existing credit scoring models that have been in use globally in the finance industry, such as the FICO model, but remixed with a different set of variables and data points towards the goals of the system.
As with the blacklists, the focus remains on a citizen’s standing with the law, which plays the most decisive component in determining whether a score is high or low. The general message is that citizens should fulfil the basic expectations in a timely fashion: paying utility bills, income tax, healthcare, social security and other mandated government payments on time, and thus having no ‘notices’ against one’s name. Individuals with legal charges against them stand to lose points, in some cases as much as 150 points per legal offence.
Unlike in the JSR system, which mainly focuses on disincentives in the form of sanctions, these systems focus exclusively on incentives for those with high scores in an attempt to encourage the types of behaviour the government considers desirable. In interviews with this author, officials revealed that activities such as volunteering, donating blood, using public transport, separating waste or working in areas of public interest, such as teachers or doctors, could be interpreted as ‘good credit’ and boost one’s score.
Citizens in the ‘good credit’ region (600 and above), can unlock a range of benefits that can be placed in three categories:
- Deposit-free access such as public cycles.
- Discounted access such as subway rides.
- Priority access to services such as government administrative services.
In its present iteration the scores seem more like a government version of a loyalty scheme — all citizens get access to the basic service but some can opt-in for fringe benefits for convenience and comfort. Those with a low score face no direct punishments but the low score is the punishment itself, as it denies access to the benefits afforded to high scores.
The scores are voluntary at the moment and, so far, there has been fairly low engagement, with less than one-third of either city’s population registered on the app and the average score lying between 600 and 650. Government officials in charge of implementing the system suggest that they are hoping the score can be adopted by more government agencies and reduce the friction citizens may face when using government services.
