Social Credit “in” or “as” the Cage of Regulation of Socialist Legality

Chinese social credit (SC) and SC systems (SCSs) represent a wide spectrum of measures, practices, and administrative styles clustered around the quantification of objectives and expectations targeting people, groups, and activity and their interactions in all spheres of collective organization. Their overarching policy goal is “trustworthiness” in collective life. At one end of the spectrum are formalized systems of public and private credit rating and assessment systems coordinated by administrative organs at all levels of government. At the mid-point are many forms of compliance/assessment systems aided by big data and generative AI. At the other end are all systems of data-based compliance and assessment systems managed by public or private institutional organs. As a form of socialist legality, SCSs function as substantive law, as process, and as a mediating space between administrative and political authority. The research question in this article is straightforward: in what ways are SCSs embedded in the conceptualization and implementation of socialist legality? Two sub-questions emerge: (1) how does that embedding shape the character of SC “as” or “in” the cage of regulation through which Chinese legal structures are ordered, and (2) in what ways does the implementation of SC through platforms change or displace traditional forms of the administration of law?.