ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 situates current surveillance in China in its historical context, and explains the state’s philosophy of ‘social governance’ and how surveillance operates through bottom-up grid management and top-down database centralisation. It then analyses how different ‘social credit’ systems score citizens based on their financial, social, and personal behaviours, to reward and punish them. Lastly, it ponders the systems’ function creep during the COVID-19 pandemic and the forthcoming Social Credit Law.
