National law required to prevent abuse of social credit system

NATIONAL LEVEL REGULATIONS are required to avoid abuse of credit punishment measures and safeguard individuals' legal rights and interests, Southern Metropolis Daily comments:

At a recent news conference, Meng Wei, the spokesperson for the National Development and Reform Commission, said that promoting the social credit system should always abide by the laws and regulations and be reasonable and appropriate, in order to avoid any abuse of the system and excessive expansion of credit investigations and punishment measures.

Since the State Council, China's Cabinet, issued the Outline for the Social Credit System Construction Plan (2014-20) in June 2014, there have been widespread concerns about the possibility of the system being abused. The construction of social credit system, especially the punishment mechanism for discredited behavior, is playing a growing role in regulating market order and promoting integrity and keeping promises.

But recently there has been a tendency for the excessive application of credit-related punishment measures in social issues. As many provinces and regions have launched local social credit regulations, some regions illegally incorporate behavior that are not suitable for inclusion in the punishment mechanism of the credit system.

The media have reported that some local authorities incorporate individuals' frequent job-hopping or listening to music without wearing earphones on the subway in the credit records of individuals, which provokes controversy on whether such actions abuse the credit punishment measures and violate people's personal rights and interests.

Without a unified national level law or national regulations on the application of credit punishment measures, it is understandable that local regulations on the punishment mechanism for local credit systems vary, and may cause some controversy on whether these punishment measures are appropriate or not. That is why the National Development and Reform Commission mentioned the importance of avoiding abuse of credit punishment measures in its recent news conference. In the construction of the social credit system, a national level law or regulation is required to avoid any abuse of the credit punishment measures. In addition, it is also necessary for the central authority to implement strict supervision over local individual credit management organizations, in order to safeguard people's legal rights and interests.

Meanwhile, there should be a review mechanism to safeguard the rights and interests of individuals and curb any abuse of credit punishment measures.