Time: 5:00 - 7:00pm
Venue: Room 313, Third Floor, School of Law Building, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, E1 4NS
AbstractIt is more than 15 years since work towards the design and construction of a social credit system (shehui xinyong tixi 社会信用体系) began in earnest. In that time, much has changed in terms of how social credit is both conceptualised and applied. What began as a central plan for the specific provision of financial credit (zhengxin 征信) has evolved into a highly decentralised collective of thousands of different initiatives unified by an abstract ideological goal, namely the promotion of sincerity and honesty (chengxin 诚信) across all walks of life. This talk will chart the development of social credit thought from its origins as a ‘technology of risk’ in the provision of financial services to its role as disciplinary ‘technology of regulation’ deployed at the local level in the pursuit of a state-arbitered moral ideal. Moving beyond Western conflations of social credit, this talk will draw on extensive fieldwork and documentary analysis to focus on how the system is conceptualised and operationalised by Chinese policymakers.
Adam Knight is a PhD candidate at the Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) where he focuses on the design, implementation and consequences of the Chinese social credit system. Adam holds a First Class degree in Chinese Studies from the University of Oxford, as well as an MSc in Social Science of the Internet (Distinction) from the Oxford Internet Institute. He is a regular media commentator, cited by the BBC, Financial Times and South China Morning Post among others, as well as a speaker on the topic of smart governance and internet policy in China.
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