The Chinese government have announced the development of “social credit system”, the aim being to reinforce the idea that “keeping trust is glorious and breaking trust is disgraceful”, according to a document released by the government explaining the new scheme. The mandatory programme is not fully operational yet, but the government hopes for it to be implicated nationwide by 2020; regardless, it has already had impacts on millions of people across China already. As far as we know, the goal of the scheme is "raising the awareness for integrities and the level of credibility within society". The Chinese government has presented it as a means to perfect the “socialist market economy” (完善社会主义市场经济体制) as well as strengthening governance in Chinese society (加强和创新社会治理). This seems to suggest that the government in China sees the system as a means to both regulate the economy, but also as a tool of governance to track and control the behaviour of citizens.

The decision to implement such a policy comes after the Chinese government shut down a further 4,000 websites for spreading “improper values” in September 2018, following the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989, in which up to 10,000 student-led protesters who did not like the way the government ran the economy or were campaigning for more democracy were shot down and killed.

The current outline focuses mainly on four areas: "honesty in government affairs" (政务诚信), "commercial integrity" (商务诚信), "societal integrity" (社会诚信), and "judicial credibility" (司法公信) of both ordinary citizens and Chinese businesses. The system is one of the latest forms of mass surveillance using big data analysis technology; paper records on individuals and households (such as the dàng'àn (档案) and hùkǒu (户口) systems) also exist, but do not provide nearly the same rapidity of feedback and consequences for Chinese citizens as an integrated electronic system, mainly because of aggregating paper records for detailed analysis.

It is unclear exactly how the system works and will work when it is fully implemented, but current understanding is that a person’s “social credit” is determined by their behaviour.

The exact methodology is unknown, but certain infractions could include accessing or writing blacklisted articles that infringe the government’s censorship firewall, but also offences such as “bad driving” or “smoking in non-smoking zones.” On the other hand, citizens may be rewarded for “good behaviour”, for example through discounts on energy bills, the ability to rent things without deposits and getting better interest rates at banks; one of the most bizarre reported “rewards” is that high credit scores will help Chinese citizens get more matches on online dating websites, as China's biggest dating site “Baihe”, is boosting the profiles of “good citizens”.

Whilst not fully in place, the system has already been subject to much controversy and criticism, particularly in how it will be applied to individuals as well as companies; this is made worse by the fact that many people have already faced various punishments for the so-called “violation” of social protocols, as up to nine million people have already been blocked from purchasing domestic flights due to their “low scores.” Furthermore, although the scheme is still in its preliminary stages, the system has already had other hugely detrimental impact on those with low credit scores, such as banning people and their children from private education, renting houses, using credit cards, and limiting employment opportunities, especially to appointments of high prestige. For this reason, the proposed system has been condemned by many as being potentially corrupt and the intrusion into people’s behaviour immoral - for instance, the scheme has been described by the Human Rights Watch as “chilling” and “filled with arbitrary abuses.” Others have commented that the move feels like legislation straight from dystopian fiction, such as freelance journalist James O’Malley, who tweeted a video in October 2018 of an announcement on a bullet train from Beijing to Shanghai warning people not to misbehave - or else their “behaviour will be recorded in individual credit information system,” leading more people to condemn the system as “nightmarish” or “Orwellian”.

However there are some people in China who say that so far, the system in place has been successful in making Chinese citizens better people. For instance, a thirty-two year old Chinese entrepreneur by the alias of “Chen” told Foreign Policy, “I feel like in the past six months, people's behaviour has gotten better and better. For example, when we drive, now we always stop in front of crosswalks. If you don't stop, you will lose your points. At first, we just worried about losing points, but now we got used to it.”

Ultimately, it is still too early to know how China’s latest step towards stricter methods of mass-surveillance will turn out when this system of tracking the social, moral and financial history of the 1.2billion population in China comes into full force. Many indeed are concerned about the direction China is headed in; how much further will privacy and personal freedom of speech (long under siege in China) be removed? The real questions about the future of trust are not technological or economic; they are ethical, and it unknown what way forward the Chinese government will go with this development in the future.