Adam Knight (Oxford)

The Chinese social credit system is a loose collective of decentralised big data- driven initiatives, unified by a common ideology and a joint system of reward and punishment. Through the application of economic principles of reputational management, the social credit system seeks to solve specific governance issues, namely the enforcement of judicial decisions and the promotion of a particular kind of moralised behaviour. If implemented, the social credit system will become the world’s largest social experiment, applying theories of behavioural nudging to a population of 1.4 billion. Some initial media coverage aside, little is known about how the social credit system operates ‘on the ground’. In its current form, the system exists in pilot format, with 43 Chinese cities operating individual iterations of the initiative. Understanding how these pilot schemes function may provide a bellwether for how the system will be implemented at the national level. This talk draws upon extensive policy analysis and fieldwork to provide a case study of one such pilot city system, Rongcheng in Shandong province, for the first time.

Adam is a freelance researcher and journalist focusing on the intersection between public and private actors in the regulation of China’s online sphere. He holds a BA in Chinese Studies and an MSc in Social Science of the Internet, both from the University of Oxford.

Website: www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/adam-knight/