What is the emerging ethical dilemma all about?
• The Social Credit System is a national reputation system being developed by the
Chinese government.
• By 2020, it is intended to standardise the assessment of citizens' and businesses'
economic and social reputation, or 'Social Credit'.The system will be one unified system
and there will be a single system-wide social credit score for each citizen and business.
• By 2018, some restrictions had been placed on citizens, whom state-owned media
described as the first step toward creating a national social credit system.
• The system is considered a form of mass surveillance which uses big data analysis
technology.
• The government of modern China has also maintained systems of paper records on
individuals and households such as the dàng'àn and hùkǒu systems which officials
might refer to, but did not provide the same degree and rapidity of feedback and
consequences for Chinese citizens as the integrated electronic system because of the
much greater difficulty of aggregating paper records for rapid, robust analysis.
What factors or events led to this dilemma?
• During the rule of Mao, the work unit was the main intermediate between the individual and the
Communist Party of China. The unit concept, as such, is derived from Hegelian and especially behaviorist
social science. Other related examples include the neighborhood unit in developments, study of living
creatures at the level of a defined ecological unit, the entity concept from accounting, the strategic business
unit in commerce, the unit concept of church fellowship in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, the
use of individual behavior as the unit of study in radical behaviorism, and the meme in anthropology.
• In it’s first phase, grid-style policing was a system for more effective communication between public security
bureaus. Within a few years, the grid system was adapted for use in distributing social services. Grid
management provided the authorities not only with greater situational awareness on the group level, but
also enhanced the tracking and monitoring of individuals.
• In 2018, sociologist Zhang Lifan explained that Chinese society today is still deficient in trust. People often
expect to be cheated or to get in trouble even if they are innocent. He believes that it is due to the Cultural
Revolution, where friends and family members were deliberately pitted against each other and millions of
Chinese were killed. The stated purpose of the social credit system is to help Chinese people trust each
other again.
What are the societal implication of this dilemma?
• Implications for citizens
From the Chinese government's Plan for Implementation, the SCS is due to be fully
implemented by 2020. Once implemented the system will manage the rewards, or
punishments, of citizens on the basis of their economic and personal behavior. Some types of
punishments include: flight ban, exclusion from private schools, slow internet connection,
exclusion from high prestige work, exclusion from hotels, and registration on a public
blacklist.
Travel ban
Exclusion from school admission
Social status
Repression of religious minorities
Debt Collection
Public display
Why is it important to question the moral and ethical issues
surrouding innovations in science and technology?
It is important to question the moral and ethical issues surrounding innovations
in science and technology because when it includes to a certain moral values
such as concern for people and empathy. There is a need to incorporate these
humanitarian values into science and technology. The huminitarian values found
in moral educaton can found in science such as objectivity, rationality,
practicality, honesty and accuracy. Ethics issue is the concern of all mankind
because of specific needs of our respective cultures.
In the face of this dilemma, why is it important to study STS?
Science and technology is important because STS help us students to know about
social impact and understand political forces. STS as a teaching field reflects a dawning
recognition that specialization in today’s research universities does not fully prepare
future citizens to respond knowledgeably and reflectively to the most important
challenges of the contemporary world. Increasingly, the dilemma that confronts
people, whether in government, industry, politics or daily life, cut across the
conventional line of academic training and thought. STS seek overcome the divisions,
particularly between the two cultures of humanities and natural sciences.
