Civilized cities or social credit? Overlap and tension between emergent governance infrastructures in China

Abstract

Foreign imaginaries of surveillance and informatization in China are commonly connected to notions of omnipresence, advanced technology, and coherent governance. In reality, however, the Chinese government’s efforts at the building of a digital society are permeated by confusion over the meaning of central edicts, interdepartmental and regional fragmentation, and overlap between different digital governance systems. This article interrogates the connection between two emerging governance infrastructures embedded in the Chinese Party-state’s latest informatization drive, the “National Civilized Cities Award” (NCCA) and the “Social Credit System Project” (SCSP) through a mixed methods approach. It combines data from an analysis of a recent NCCA assessment system government work manual, project websites, and findings from thirty qualitative video interviews with residents from twenty different cities in China to demonstrate that overlap between these projects is clear in terms of 1) criteria and indices measuring project development; 2) promoted virtues and individual behaviors; and 3) data sharing between systems. Local governments charged with the design and implementation of these initiatives frequently conflate their targets and objectives, prompting occasional reprimand from higher-level authorities. Public confusion about the meaning and purpose of both the NCCA and SCSP has meanwhile accompanied haphazard system development, demonstrating that the path towards a “digital society” in China is fraught and far from uncontested.

Technologies of migration and citizenship: Life and work at the base of Shanghai’s digital infrastructure stack

“…Although purely digital technologies are necessary to coordinate and make surveillance possible, the transmission of data that facilitates both pandemic management programs and other urban governance infrastructures such as the civilized cities awards and social credit projects analyzed in this issue relies on pervasive and ubiquitous access to the network, which ultimately takes place through fiber-optic cable (cf. Trauth-Goik, 2023, this issue).…”

Connectivity, centrality, and adaptation: The coproduction of political space in China’s standardization of autonomous driving technologies

“…ICV standardization is closely tied into China’s overall standardization system and industrial policy-making and—as with any large-scale infrastructure—involves many different authorities and institutions (Trauth-Goik, 2023, this issue). The State Council, for example, publishes important policies guiding industrial development, such as Made in China 2025 and China Standards 2035.…”

Can Civilized City Construction Promote Enterprise Green Innovation?

“…On the one hand, the civilized city brand is a prestigious reflection of the high level of civilization in Chinese cities, comprehensively representing the city's level of civilized development. The CCC policy emphasizes the coordinated development of economic, political, ecological, and spiritual civilization, placing higher legitimacy demands on enterprise environmental behaviors from multidimensional perspectives [27,28]. On the other hand, compared to other policies, the CCC evaluation system is more comprehensive in terms of environmental governance, protection, and regulatory aspects.…”