Case II

Case II

Instructions:

In at least and at most 2 pages, using at least a 10pt font, 1 inch margins, and 1.5 line-spacing, hardcopy answers to the following prompts are due in class Monday, 11/11. Please note that unstapled (loose-leaf) papers will not be accepted for grading.

  1. Identify as best you can the moral problem(s) posed by the following case from the 2019 Regional Ethics Bowl;
  2. Carefully explain what Eudaimonic Rule Utilitarianism implies about the moral rightness or wrongness of the Chinese social credit system;
  3. Carefully explain what Kantian Ethical Theory implies about the moral rightness or wrongness of the Chinse social credit system; and,
  4. Briefly conclude by explaining which of the two analyses from (2) and (3), Utilitarian and Kantian, you find most compelling or most convincing.

Your Best Self Now

The Chinese Government is rolling out an electronic social credit system to promote “trustworthiness” in its society and economy.1 The program is an ambitious attempt to boost the Chinese economy by encouraging pro-social behavior among its citizens and corporations, while at the same time accumulating vast amounts of data to drive policy decisions. Those exhibiting incentivized behaviors (e.g., donating to charity, stopping at crosswalks, abiding by food safety regulations, or promptly paying taxes) can earn rewards and privileges, like discounts on insurance and access to prestigious civil service jobs. Those with poor scores suffer punishments such as restricted air travel or being denied access to certain schools and universities.

Critics call the system Orwellian and claim that it presents yet another threat to the already thin freedoms enjoyed by Chinese citizens.

Proponents suggest it’s no different than Yelp or Uber, which aggregate subjective consumer reports to provide better service. Perhaps a more apt metaphor for the West is the credit score, which is intended to measure and approximate fiscal responsibility, and is then used by businesses to determine how much credit to extend to customers. The ultimate aim of the project, perhaps like Ebay’s seller ratings, is to introduce “novel tools for monitoring and regulating market behavior.”2 “I feel like in the past six months, people’s behavior has gotten better and better” said a Chinese entrepreneur in support of the program.3 “The social credit system is just really adding technology and ... formality to the way the party already operates,” says Samantha Hoffman, a consultant at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) who researches Chinese social management.

The Chinese government has touted the program not as a method of social control, so much as a big-data enabled step towards market regulation, which they hope to use to transform their economy and better compete with the West. Chinese policymakers intend to utilize the massive government data collection program to quickly react to social and environmental trends. The concept is that, by unifying the Chinese business and civic sectors around a set of common incentives, the economy and society at large would become more agile and adaptable, while “Western market economies, in comparison, would appear slow-moving and highly fragmented.”

The system is the latest of a long line of attempts at social control by the Chinese government, dating back to the Maoist era - with at times disastrous results. Similar Government systems have ranged from state-monitored farming collectives to self-policing schemes which encouraged citizens to report their neighbors’ transgressions.

Of course, for those who have already incurred a bad score, it is unclear how a person can redeem themselves. The Communist Party intends to make “China a pleasant and acceptable place for people to live in order to not get angry,” says Rogier Creemers, a scholar of Chinese law at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies in the Netherlands, “It doesn’t mean it’s benevolent. Keeping people happy is a much more effective means than employing force.”

  1. Mistreanu, Simina “Life Inside China’s Social Credit Laboratory” foreignpolicy.com. April 3, 2018. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/03/life-inside-chinas-social-credit-l…
  2. Meissner, Mirjam. “China’s Social Credit System” Merics, Mercator Institute for China Studies. May 24, 2017. https://www.merics.org/sites/default/files/2017-09/China%20Monitor_39_S…
  3. Ma, Alexandra “China Social Credit System: Punishments and Rewards Explained,” Business Insider. Oct. 29, 2018. https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-punishments-…