In 2007, the state established the system of "Inter-ministerial Joint Meeting of Social Credit System". The original lead agency was the General Office of the State Council. In 2008, it was changed to the People's Bank of China, and in 20 12, it was adjusted to be led by the National Development and Reform Commission and the Central Bank, which has continued to this day.
After ten years' development, this system has produced positive effects, but at the same time it also presents some disadvantages. At present, the credit information system has seriously lagged behind the needs of economic and financial development. We should attach great importance to and effectively solve these drawbacks in order to promote the smooth construction of the credit information system and reduce economic and financial risks.
Three great achievements
Over the past decade or so, the achievements of this system in coordination and promotion mainly include three aspects:
(a) to promote the introduction of the "social credit system construction planning outline (20 14-2020)". In order to strengthen the construction of government integrity, business integrity, social integrity and judicial public trust, the Outline puts forward 84 work requirements and tasks to various departments and regions, and defines the departments and regions that take the lead and participate in the implementation of these requirements and tasks. The publication of the Outline has played a positive role in strengthening and improving related work.
Although the "Outline" itself requires strengthening the implementation of responsibilities and strengthening organizational leadership, it is much softer than the national "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan". In the remaining three years, what progress will be made in the actual implementation of the tasks proposed in the outline? To what extent can the actual progress be attributed to this inter-ministerial liaison meeting coordination mechanism? Will there be an independent evaluation? The positive significance and function of the Outline should be affirmed, but it is obviously exaggerated to say that "the implementation of the Outline will be a milestone turning point in the process of China's economic system reform from market system to credit system".
(2) Initially promoting the establishment of a joint disciplinary system. Similarly, this institutional mechanism is also helpful to promote the "Guiding Opinions of the State Council on Establishing and Perfecting the Joint Incentive System of Trustworthiness and the Joint Punishment System of Breach of Trust to Accelerate the Construction of Social Integrity" issued on 20 16. Since the publication of the Opinions, China has initially established a wide-ranging and all-level joint reward and punishment system, including the so-called "blacklist" system. Although the norms and processes of the system have yet to be improved, the positive role of the joint disciplinary mechanism has initially appeared. This will play a positive role in changing the bad environment in which many fields have violated laws and regulations and the cost of serious breach of contract and dishonesty is too low for a period of time in China.
(3) Initially establish a public credit information sharing mechanism. At present, the * * * sharing mechanism of public information in China includes two levels: (1) interconnection between public departments; (2) Build the website "Credit China" to provide services for the society. At the same time, it also began to explore in-depth cooperation with some market institutions, promote the integration of public credit information and commercial credit information, and the application of public credit information in commercial scenarios. And on this basis, promote the establishment of a national public credit information center.
This achievement is also controversial: so far, only a small part (currently no more than 20%) of the information collected by the platform from various public departments that should be publicly disclosed has been provided to various public departments and society for inquiry. Why is this? At the same time, I am also worried about its service efficiency. If all public departments can regulate the information they should disclose according to the legal requirements and provide necessary convenience for the public to obtain their information with an open and friendly attitude, market institutions (including credit information service institutions) will certainly be able to integrate and utilize public information in the competition, provide better services for the society and achieve the same goal. The future development and effectiveness of the National Public Credit Information Center remains to be seen.
In addition, the joint meeting also contributed to promoting the establishment of a unified social credit code system for legal persons and other organizations in China and speeding up the credit construction in various industries and regions.
Main problems and their influence
(A) the concept of "social credit system" is not clear enough.
The formulation of "social credit system" first appeared in official documents in 2003, that is, in "Establishing and Perfecting Social Credit System". The formation of a social credit system supported by morality, based on property rights and guaranteed by law is a necessary condition for building a modern market system and a fundamental solution for standardizing the market economic order. To enhance the credit awareness of the whole society, the government, enterprises, institutions and individuals should take honesty and trustworthiness as the basic code of conduct. In accordance with the direction of improving laws and regulations, franchising, commercial operation and professional service, we will speed up the construction of credit service system for enterprises and individuals. Establish credit supervision and disciplinary system for dishonesty. "In this resolution. Among them, concepts such as "social credit system" and "enterprise and individual credit service system" have appeared successively.
Logically, "social credit system" covers the latter two concepts. "Social credit system" is a concept including morality, property rights and law. The development direction of "enterprise and individual credit service system" is "perfecting laws and regulations, franchising, commercial operation and professional service", which actually refers to the emerging credit service industry with a relatively narrow concept.
Since the concept of "construction of social credit system" was put forward, the government has continuously proposed and called for "strengthening the construction of government integrity, business integrity, social integrity and judicial public trust", "establishing and improving the social credit system, praising integrity and punishing dishonesty" and "establishing and improving the social credit system". The aforementioned "Outline" also stated this concept: "The social credit system is an important part of the socialist market economic system and social governance system. It is based on laws, regulations, standards and contracts, based on improving the credit records and credit infrastructure network covering members of society, supported by the compliance application of credit information and credit service system, with the inherent requirements of establishing the concept of honesty culture and promoting the traditional virtues of honesty, and with the incentive and restraint of trustworthiness as the reward and punishment mechanism, with the aim of improving the integrity awareness and credit level of the whole society. "
However, the definition of "social credit system" has not been clear and specific enough. Therefore, everyone has their own understanding of this concept. More people understand it in a broader sense, which covers not only the credit market and its information services, but also morality, property rights, law, government affairs, commerce, society and justice. Market economy is a credit economy. Therefore, in a broad sense, "social credit system" is a concept similar to "market economy system". However, some institutions and individuals often abuse this concept in this broad understanding, resulting in some negative effects.
Few people are willing to understand this concept pragmatically from a narrower direction. "Social credit system" is roughly equal to "social credit system".
(2) "Imperfect social credit system" has become a big frame to absorb problems and shirk responsibilities, and it has become another negative effect of vigorously advocating the construction of "social credit system". It provides an excuse for some industry regulators to fail to maintain the market order of the industry. When it comes to problems, they can all say "lack of credit", "problems with social integrity" and "no social credit system has been established". In this way, the hope of correcting all dishonest problems, market violations and even cracking down on illegal crimes is pinned on the establishment of a "social credit system" and is expected to be "finished in one battle." This is not only naive, unrealistic, but also harmful. As David pointed out in Ripples, "Some things will be harmful if they are too big."
In recent years, "imperfect social credit system" has become a big box to absorb problems and pass the buck. Almost all social problems from all walks of life, places, whole or part have been put into this box. These problems were originally economic credit problems, honesty problems, violations and supervision problems, crimes and judicial problems, food safety problems, environmental protection problems and so on. In this way, everyone will feel at ease and will not bear the main responsibility for problems and solutions; Confuse the contradictions with different characteristics and nature, and often ignore the subject, main responsibility and root cause of the problem. The "prescription" to solve the problem is often wrong and untimely, and it can't grasp the main aspects of the main contradictions and contradictions; Everyone pays attention to the "social credit system construction" without taking the main responsibility, waiting for the illusory and distant "social credit system construction" to be established and perfected one day, and all problems will be solved.
This negative impact is systematic, profound and long-term, which is not easy to see and measure, especially for the public sector (especially some administrative supervision departments with many industry problems) to perform their duties more actively, responsibly and effectively.
(3) It has a certain negative impact on accelerating the construction of a credit information system covering the whole society.
In a narrow sense, "social credit system" mainly refers to "enterprise and individual credit (information) service system", that is, credit reporting system. "the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China's Proposal on Formulating the Eleventh Five-Year Plan" puts forward: "Focus on improving credit records such as credit, tax payment, performance and product quality, speed up the construction of social credit system, and improve the disciplinary system for dishonesty." From here, we can see more clearly that "social credit system" mainly refers to "credit system".
On the basis of drawing lessons from international experience and domestic practice, especially after the State Council issued the Regulation on the Administration of Credit Information Industry on 20 13, the concept of "credit information system" can be clearly defined without causing controversy. That is to say, "credit investigation" refers to the activity of collecting, saving, sorting, processing and analyzing the credit information of the information subject according to law as a credit investigation service institution other than the two parties to the credit transaction, mainly providing information services for the credit party of the credit transaction; The sum of service products, prices, markets, service institutions, information subjects and supervision and management related to credit information services is the credit information system. This is a special information service industry. The particularity is mainly manifested in two aspects. First, the particularity of information, mainly including information reflecting the credit status of the information subject, including non-public personal credit information; Second, the particularity of the function, in addition to its direct credit risk management service function, also has an extended social function to promote the cherish of their own credit status and honesty and trustworthiness. In any case, this understanding of the "credit system" is clear and appropriate, which is conducive to improving the social credit environment.
Under the banner of "building a social credit system", and in line with the idea of calling on all walks of life and local governments at all levels to build a "social credit system" (in fact, it is a "credit information system"), all industries and regions are encouraged to build their own credit information databases first, implement classified supervision of industry credit information, and engage in interconnection in the future, with the goal of building a "national credit information sharing platform". This makes the construction of China's credit information system face the following problems:
First, encourage the construction of segmented credit information database, and lead the credit information industry into the wrong path of industry credit information. This violates the objective law of credit information system construction, because it is a core requirement of credit information industry to include the credit records left by credit subjects in all walks of life in their credit reports. In a big country like China, it may be feasible to engage in industry credit reporting and regional credit reporting, which is welcomed by some people, but it is by no means a good top-level design and mode choice, which will only reduce the efficiency of credit reporting services and increase the cost of economic operation; It is not easy to talk about interconnection in the future. If it is feasible, it is bound to take a detour and pay a great cost. If we say that in some areas, accurate and appropriate industry credit supervision has the significance of active exploration, but industry credit investigation obviously should not be encouraged. True and false are often only one step away.
Second, according to the needs of industry supervision and local government social management, it will give the "credit information system" too much expectation, hoping that the "credit information system" can cure all diseases. This will also promote the alienation of the credit information system construction into the above-mentioned generalized "social credit system construction". The slogan "Building a social credit system is the fundamental policy to standardize the market economic order" put forward a few years ago is the representative of this tendency.
Third, the different nature and characteristics of public information and non-public information are confused, and the information disclosure work of public departments is tied up with the construction of credit information system, which slows down the relatively simple information disclosure process and affects the application of public information by society, including credit information agencies; It has also increased the concern of the whole society about the infringement of personal information rights and interests.
Fourth, the dual supervision of credit reporting agencies has initially formed. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) system, in the name of "credit service organization", has been managing the actual credit service organization, and is promoting credit legislation, requiring the state to formally entrust it with "credit" supervision function.
Generally speaking, these developments have had a negative impact on accelerating the construction of a unified, efficient and social-wide credit information system.
In addition, under the call of "building a social credit system", all localities and industries are building "credit information systems" to varying degrees. Some places use public resources to build this database system, but the use effect is very low, resulting in waste. However, relative to the above problems, the problem of redundant construction is a relatively "small" problem.
policy advice
Although it is difficult to quantitatively evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of "social credit system construction" and its inter-ministerial contact meeting coordination mechanism, its disadvantages have seriously affected the implementation of the Outline and the construction of credit information system. Therefore, contrary to the suggestion that "China needs a permanent organization that is more detached from the interests of the department to continue to gnaw at the hard bone of credit construction", our suggestion is:
(a) termination of the "social credit system construction inter-ministerial contact meeting" system;
(2) the State Council requires local governments and relevant departments to continue to work more actively in accordance with the division of labor and their respective responsibilities in the Outline of Social Credit System Construction Planning (20 14-2020) and actively implement the requirements and tasks put forward in the Outline;
The State Council directly led the construction of public * * government information disclosure and joint disciplinary system, incorporated public * * credit information disclosure into the government information disclosure work, and entrusted relevant ministries and relevant professional institutions to assist the State Council in supervising and evaluating these two works.