In her talk Weizenbaum Fellow Katika Kühnreich will speak about past and present attempts of (digital) social control or „social management” in China. 
For more than a year China’s efforts to
 build so-called social credit systems have become a widely discussed 
topic. In her talk Katika Kühnreich will speak about past and present 
attempts of (digital) social control or „social management” in China and
 about political programs of and influences of China’s Communist Party. 
The Chinese government’s current plans to construct social credit 
systems and the inclusion of data collected by governmental agencies as 
well as private sectors are often criticized by Western media.
However, the foundations of the 
programs are rarely mentioned. By reflecting on the consequences of 
these programs and their central players the talk will highlight the 
role of a communist party as a leader in social regulation via 
datafication and its relationship with Confucianism. Taking a look at 
the past of China’s government programs, their implications as well as 
at the situation of social regulation in the West, this talk discusses 
important implications of datafication and quantification for social 
regulation and social control from a comparative perspective.