A New Form of Socio-technical Control: The Case of China’s Social Credit System

Beginning with a concise reflection on the significance of digital sovereignty, this chapter describes and problematizes the Chinese social credit system in connection with the notion of digital sovereignty. It provides a synthetic illustration of the origin, evolution, essential characteristics, structure, explicit aims, and main limitations of the Chinese social credit system, taking into account the specific historical and ideological context in which the system has been designed and developed. On the basis of this description, the potentialities, still to be realised, of the use of artificial intelligence techniques in the different applications related to surveillance, evaluation, and sanctioning are assessed and discussed, in relation to the Chinese discourse on digital sovereignty. The last part of the chapter discusses the potential consequences of such a system in terms of individual rights, individual self-determination, and autonomy, which in turn influence the construction of the entire social fabric.