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Jamie Wong | Automating Guanxi: Scaling Trust with Social Credit Systems in Contemporary China

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Lecture

Mon, Nov 17, 2025

4:30 PM – 6 PM EST (GMT-5)

Louis A. Simpson International Building, Room A71

Princeton, NJ 08544, United States

Details

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Recent scholarship has revealed that China’s "social credit system" is neither monolithic nor centralized, but rather fragmented and multifaceted. Moreover, research indicates that the concept enjoys broad public approval within China. This talk offers an anthropological contextualization of these dynamics and ethnographically illustrates the formation of marketized "social credit systems" in contemporary China. Jamie Wong first elaborates on the post-Mao circumstances that initially elevated, and later compromised, the function of reciprocal relationships (关系 guanxi) as a mode of moral accounting, ultimately contributing to a widespread "credibility crisis" (诚信危机 chengxin weiji). Then, drawing on fieldwork from 2019 to 2021 with Chinese startup companies working on data-driven “social credit” solutions for the crisis, Wong illustrates how they attempt either to automate away guanxi practices through aggregate ratings or to extend guanxi connections and the notion of "face" (面子 mianzi) beyond geographical constraints. By highlighting how these market-driven “social credit systems” mirror those that emerged in the United States in the 1830s while being crucially informed by the rating features of the contemporary American gig and platform economy, Wong shows how “social credit systems” in China are an American import in more ways than one.

Where

Louis A. Simpson International Building, Room A71

Princeton, NJ 08544, United States

Speakers

Jamie Wong's profile photo

Jamie Wong

Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Princeton University

Jamie Wong is Assistant Professor at Princeton University, jointly appointed in the Department of Anthropology and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS). An economic and political anthropologist and a science and technology studies (STS) scholar, her research broadly examines Chinese society and governance in the context of emerging global systems of technology and finance. Her first book project, The Weight of Scale, explores the convergence of venture capitalism, the digital economy, and Chinese statecraft. Through fieldwork with venture capital investors, startup founders, and their corporate and government partners, she investigates how their understanding and practices of nested logics of “scale" herald new configurations of Chinese state and society. In parallel, she also examines how China’s internet culture and digital economy intersect with governance practices and forms of civil discourse.

Sponsors

Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China. No image description provided

Hosted By

Center on Contemporary China | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies, Center on Contemporary China (OWNER)