China races toward plan to blacklist companies for their behaviour

China is making swift advances with a system for measuring the social creditworthiness of companies, a sweeping data-collection effort that could solidify Beijing's control over foreign and domestic enterprises and possibly challenge the dominance of US credit-rating companies.

The corporate social credit system was originally dreamed up two decades ago, but it has since expanded into an ambitious national project that is now taking shape, according to a new, 95-page report from the consulting firm Trivium China for the US China Economic & Security Review Commission. The CSCS effort gathers information on companies from at least 44 state agencies and their branch offices in every province across the country.

"The scale of this data aggregation scheme cannot be overstated," the report said. "In a US context, this would be roughly equivalent to the IRS, FBI, EPA, USDA, FDA, HHS, HUD, Department of Energy, Department of Education, and every courthouse, police station, and state agency sharing records across a single platform."

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