The Chinese government issued its first ever guideline on setting up a social credit management platform at the end of December 2016. The system is intended to rank individuals’ trustworthiness according to standards established by the government.
The guideline proposed to start the system by collecting information in the fields that the public is most concerned about, including food safety, environment protection, product quality, medical care, and law enforcement. Sensitive professions, such as academics, teachers, government employees, lawyers, doctors, will be the first ones to be subject to the system.
As more and more observers are warning against a declining sense of trust within Chinese society, the social credit system which, according to the guidelines, will severely punish dishonest people, promises to act as a serious deterrent. The government claimed that they will gradually make the social credit records of officials transparent to raise their credibility with the public.
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