Pengfei Xu’s seminar is decided on 21st November 2023 from 1 pm to 2 pm at Fylde C34. Attached please find the poster.

The registration link is https://rb.gy/bhbre. QR registration code is involved in the poster.

Topic: What Does Credit Mean? The Evolution of China's Social Credit System

Introduction: In 2014, the Chinese government officially promulgated the social credit system (SCS), which aims to encourage sincerity in Chinese society. Through the official document, the Chinese government wants to guide individual behaviour by quantifying value and virtue. This presentation will investigate how Chinese rulers’ writing and thinking about credit have developed over the years. By tracing its emergence and development, this presentation illuminates that credit has developed along three normative dimensions: a motive to produce homo economicus, an essential element for governing China, and a tool for political obedience in the hands of the CCP. This presentation demonstrates how credit is rooted in discourses and official practices that evolved through history. In the first part, the presentation focuses on how certain credit problems were described and shaped in the official material of the Chinese government. It then applies genealogy in the second part to explore historical antecedents of morality discourses in the history of Chinese governance. By putting moral practices into Chinese history, it points out that the requirement of civic morality in SCS fits the historical tradition of Chinese rulers. In the last part, by considering the contemporary socio-political context, it demonstrates that the scope of credit within the SCS is being extended, becoming a tool of social governance in other fields. These three dimensions are closely connected with what counts as credit within the social credit system. Among these three dimensions, this presentation historicises and problematises the ways credit is constructed.