Announcing Upcoming Publication of Special Issue--"Law and Social Credit in China: An Introduction ," The China Review, Vol. 24, No. 3 (2024, forthcoming)

 

Pix credit here ("Always trust and depend on the knowledge and strength of the masses"

 Björn Ahl (Institute of East Asian Studies, University of Cologne); Larry Catá Backer (The Pennsylvania State University (University Park); and Yongxi Chen (ANU College of Law) are delighted to announce the upcoming publication of a special issue of The China Review (Vol. 24, No. 3) which we have the honor to edit. It is entitled "Law and Social Credit in China: An Introduction."

We have distributed (through SSRN) the Introduction to the special issue (with great thanks to Bjorn Ahl for taking the leading role in its marvelous drafting). The Abstract to the Introduction provides a taste of the issue and its objectives:

Social credit is a mode of governance that spurs private actors, as well as state agencies, to base their decision-making regarding others on credibility assessments. It lays out a central-level framework for creating various mechanisms, ranging from commercial personal credit ratings to compliance assessments and blacklists run by regulatory agencies, with the aim of incentivizing certain behaviors. In addition to a range of commercial pilot projects, the Chinese party-state has also embraced the use of blacklists for trust-breakers and credibility-based regulation to enhance its governing capacity to tackle a wide range of societal problems. This special issue investigates the multifaceted relationship between law as a traditional form of regulation and social credit in China. Together and from differing perspectives, the special issue’s contributors argue that the SCS reflects changes in regulatory approaches that imply a fundamental transformation of how law is enforced, as well as a profound alteration of the forms and functions of law itself. In analyzing various subsystems or components of the SCS, the issue provides insight into the logic and rules underlying social credit assessments and explores their link to China’s political-legal normative framework. (Law and Social Credit in China: An Introduction)

 The earlier draft of some of the contributions may be accessed here, here, and here. Contributions include:

1. Marianne von Blomberg and Björn Ahl, Debating the Legality of Social Credit Measures in China: A Review of Chinese Legal Scholarship

2. Haixu Yu, The Evolving Complex of the Chinese Corporate Tax Credit System and Tax Law

3. Larry Catá Backer, Social Credit ‘in’ or ‘as’ the Cage of Regulation of Socialist Legality

4. Chun Peng, Building a High-trust Society: Lineage, Logic, and Limitations of China’s Social Credit System

5. Yongxi Chen, Disregarding Blameworthiness, Prioritizing Deterrence: Social Credit-based Punishment and the Erosion of Individual Autonomy

6. Keren Wang, Legal and Ritualological Dynamics of Personalized ‘Pillars of Shame’ in Chinese Social Credit System Construction

The draft Introduction, Alh, Backer and Chen, Law and Social Credit in China: An Introduction may be accessed here.