The latest major innovation in China’s ecosystem of preventive repression is the proposed national social credit system (shehui xinyong tixi). Social credit has gained enormous attention in Western media, and for understandable reasons: the data-hungry system would assign every Chinese citizen a credit score based on evidence of what the state considers prosocial and antisocial behaviour and on perceived political loyalty. Using the credit number to dole out rewards and punishments, the government would have new tools to promote the total obedience of the public.

A major question is whether the hype matches reality. And the fact is that we don’t really know yet because social credit is a work in progress. The push for a national system gathered momentum after the rise of Xi Jinping in November 2012.