Automating Guanxi: Scaling Trust with Social Credit Systems in Contemporary China

Recent scholarship has revealed that China's social credit system is neither monolithic nor centralized, but rather fragmented and multifaceted. Moreover, research indicates that the concept enjoys broad public approval within China. This talk offers an anthropological contextualization of these dynamics and ethnographically illustrates the formation of marketized social credit systems in contemporary China. I first elaborate on the post-Mao circumstances that initially elevated, and later compromised, the function of reciprocal relationships (关系 guanxi) as a mode of moral accounting, ultimately contributing to a widespread credibility crisis (诚信危机 chengxin weiji). Then, drawing on fieldwork from 2019 to 2021 with Chinese startup companies working on data-driven social credit solutions for the crisis, I illustrate how they attempt either to automate away guanxi practices through aggregate ratings or to extend guanxi connections and the notion of face (面子 mianzi) beyond geographical constraints. By highlighting how these market-driven social credit systems mirror those that emerged in the United States in the 1830s while being crucially informed by the rating features of the contemporary American gig and platform economy, I show how social credit systems in China are an American import in more ways than one. --- Event Details: https://my.princeton.edu/rsvp?id=1960830