European Business Group Issues Wake-up Call on China’s Corporate ‘Social Credit’ Plan

Flags of the European Union fly next to flags of EU member countries at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on July 1, 2019. Frederick Florin/AFP/Getty Images

BEIJING—The rollout of China’s controversial corporate “social credit system” is well underway and accelerating, a European business lobby in the country said on Aug. 28, warning that foreign governments need to wake up to the plan’s potential risks.

Beijing has been developing a globally unprecedented plan to give companies and individual people “social credit” scores, a goal that has drawn international concerns that it could heighten to Orwellian levels the already strict control that the ruling Communist Party has over society and the economy.