Mr Boyi Cheng1
1The University Of Melbourne, Australia
Since the Chinese government issued the plan to establish the Social Credit System, scholars have set their sight on it. However, most of them mistakenly take commercial credit systems as the Social Credit System, although they have a complicated relationship. In this paper, I will unravel this relationship by examining the role of Baihang Credit in Chinese surveillance infrastructure. By drawing from ongoing research in the surveillance study, this paper will analyse Baihang Credit in the paradigm of panopticism and post-panopticism. Furthermore, this paper argues that Baihang Credit, as the new surveillant apparatus, helps the Chinese government to discipline and control people. To articulate the potential future of such discipline and control, I will utilise the notion of speech acts in the philosophy of language to assert that such surveillant assemblage silences people and deprives people of leverage to counter the surveillance system.
Biography
Boyi Cheng obtained his Master of Arts in Global Media Communication from the University of Melbourne. His Master Dissertation focuses on the power relations behind the surveillance system.