Quick Take: Did China Ever Have a Social Credit Score System?

China has traditionally been obsessed with ranking populations. That hasn't quite led to a social credit score system, but it might in the future

(This post is in response to a question from a paying subscriber, Hooly, who wanted to know whether the merits and ranks systems instituted by Shang Yang and others in ancient China have inspired the modern "Social Credit Score" system in China.)

Chinese society has always been quite fascinated by numbers and ranks, more so than any other society in history.

Even cultures where ranks have also been a prominent feature for centuries, like those of Korea and Japan, got their inspiration from China. Like so many other things Chinese, Koreans and Japanese found China’s complex social arrangements mesmerizing from very early on, partly because they seemed to underpin a very well-organized, literate and prosperous society.

Now, were these arrangements so important to the functioning of Chinese society? And were they a basis for China’s modern, Black Mirror-style experiments with Social Credit Score (SCS) systems? This is where things get tricky, which is the reason why a real SCS shouldn’t ruled out for China’s future.