ETHPrague 2024

The Social Credit System in the People's Republic of China. Origins, Plans, and the State of Affairs.
06-01, 11:00–11:25 (Europe/Prague), Root Stage

The Social Credit System in the PRC has been planned since 25 years the latest. I give an overview of the official statements that document the intentions and goals, and I give a short report on in situ experiences from September 2023.


The Chinese Social Credit System plans exist much longer than is publicly known. Being a means of power of an authoritarian state it nevertheless (or precisely for this reason) has rational motifs and structures that are comparable to western role models.
From a visit to the country evidence was gathered showing who actually is subject to these means and how far the goals have been achieved until now.

Martin Warnke studied in Berlin and Hamburg, received his doctorate in theoretical physics in Hamburg in 1984, began working at the University of Lüneburg, was head of the computer and media centre for many years, habilitated in computer science/digital media at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg in 2008 and has been a professor at the Institute for Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media, of which he was the founding director, at the Faculty of Cultural Studies since 2010 and has held visiting professorships at the Universities of Basel, Klagenfurt and Vienna.

He works in the field of the history and theory of digital media and the digital documentation of complex artefacts of the visual arts. He is director of the DFG Institute for Advanced Study "Media Cultures of Computer Simulation" (mecs). He founded the "HyperKult" workshop series, was spokesman for the "Computer Science and Society" section of the Gesellschaft für Informatik e. V. and is chairman of the Springhornhof art association.

Martin currently is Senior Fellow at ifk in Vienna: https://www.ifk.ac.at/fellows-detail/martin-warnke-2.html

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