【外交政策 20140508】中国为什么没有信用评分

满仓

【中文标题】中国为什么没有信用评分
【原文标题】Why There Are No Credit Scores in China
【登载媒体】外交政策
【原文作者】Rachel Lu
【原文链接】http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/05/08/why_there_are_no_credit_scores_in_china


政府的确有建立信用评分体系的计划，但毛时代的恶习依然在作祟。



所有人都应该认同中国社会遭遇了严重的信用危机。在充满了欺骗和劣质商品的环境中生活多年，中国人对陌生人永远采取提防的态度，做生意时表现得小心翼翼。有鉴于此，或许人们应当欢庆最近发生的一件事情。据中国国有媒体在5月5日报道，至高无上的国家发展和改革委员会宣布将在2017年建立全国联网的电子系统，可以追查中国公民的信用记录。这其中包括有关纳税、政府交易、财务、法律等方面履行义务的情况，甚至包括交通违章记录。但是如果这个系统可以成功实施，中国人恐怕必须要买账——到目前为止，我们还看不到相关的迹象。

当然，中国的经济在没有信用评分体系的情况下依然在持续发展。中国的银行全部国有，它们把绝大部分的贷款对象限制在大企业（最好是国有企业）和有大笔存款的高附加值客户中。借记卡比信用卡更普遍。城镇居民通常可以用可以用抵押贷款来购买房地产和汽车，但是那些无产者毫无希望。当遇到类似大病的紧急情况时，大部分中国家庭不会使用信用卡，而是动用储蓄或者向亲人借钱。同样，中国中小规模的私有企业不得不依赖所谓的影子银行系统来筹款，这种体系名声不好，它们通过个人关系或者非账面上的途径绕过正轨的银行贷款制度来筹集资金。

从理论上说，全国范围的信用体系将会通过奖诚罚骗，进一步润滑中国市场经济前进的巨轮。经济学家戴险峰5月5日在中国国有电视台CCTV的微博账户上撰文，称这个体系将会“降低交易成本”、“增进实体经济活力”，让个人获得信用卡、更低的贷款利息和其它金融产品，从而改善生活质量。

但是很多中国网民担心的并不是其它公民的可信度，而是管理这个体系的政府的可信度。据发改委提供的时间点，到2014年6月，政府将会开始给中国公民配发唯一的信用查询号码，类似于目前每个成年人的身份证号码。（公司和组织也有特定的号码。）

这项计划引发了人们对于毛泽东时代卡夫卡式制度的痛苦回忆。在共产党的领导下，一种神秘的“档案”——记录每个城市居民的政治、生活和个人违法记录的未见——跟随着每一个人从学校到工作单位。时任《纽约时报》北京通讯员的Nicholas Kristof在1992年报道，档案是“中国复杂的社会监控体制的一部分”。但随着中国人的工作和生活调动与党的关系越来越小，档案逐渐失去了意义。现在，尽管档案对那些野心勃勃的党员来说依然重要，但它对普通人的作用早已黯然失色。2013年CCTV发布了一份特别报告《档案是否已经变成废纸？》，其中提到，一份民间调查显示74％的受访者认为档案已经与他们的生活没有关系。

一些中国人担心，这种新的信用体系有可能恢复当局曾经肆意妄为的权力。一位微博用户说，这个建议是“把档案换了一个名字”，并质疑监管新体系的部门是否值得信任。“个人有机会知道这里面是什么内容吗？”另一位微博用户希望“政治因素不要参与在新体系中”，因为这会被用来打击与党的路线持不同意见的人。很多互联网用户还担心身份被盗用和行政疏忽等问题，普通人没有能力查证这些事情。

这并非空穴来风的猜忌，曾经有过档案被滥用的案件被广泛曝光。来自中部省份湖南的唐国继在1983年毕业于一所师范学院，他在2002年发现，在过去20年中之所以没有任何单位和高校愿意接收他的原因，是他个人档案中一份神秘的文件，说他精神不稳定。制作这份文件的人是大学中的一位顾问，因为唐揭发了学校管理中存在的问题而与他有过节。在将近二十年的时间里，唐对这份威力巨大的文件的存在一无所知，多年来持续向政府请愿，要求解决就业和公平对待的努力也一无所获。唐最终从事了自由作家的工作，但他的人生所付出的代价无法估量。

互联网用户还认为，中国的官员们普遍腐败、不值得信任，他们试图评估公民的信用级别颇具讽刺意味。中国一家顶级金融杂志《财经》的专栏作家叶檀评论，信用体制应当“首先从政府开始”，因为“当权者的信用记录在推动市场经济方面比普通人更加重要”。

这种担忧也是基于曾经发生过的一些事情，中国那些手眼通天的人有时会伪造他们档案中的文件以获取个人利益。2004年6月，东北部省份辽宁的一位中层官员曹忠武因腐败和伪造官方文件的罪名被判处死刑，他被发现在7年时间里，以职位升迁为目的伪造自己档案中的文件和证明。2001年他被逮捕时，共贪污了25万美元，受贿15万美元。（他在2005年9月被处决。）

当然，网上的闲言碎语或许不足以改变一个必然的发展方向。但是当局也在关注网络舆情以收集民意，如果政府对此有所犹豫，或者内部对于新信用体制的范围和时间有所分歧，网络声音也可以起到一定的作用。在2013年9月的党代表大会中，习近平主席呼吁市场在中国的经济生活中要起到“决定性的作用”。或许，政府最好能听从他的建议，把信用评分的工作交给独立的第三方机构。



原文：

The government has a plan, but the shadow of Mao-era abuses still looms.

HONG KONG — Few would dispute that Chinese society suffers from a serious trust problem. After surviving crafty scams and shoddy products for years, Chinese people have become guarded with strangers and cautious in business dealings. Given all that, it would be tempting to celebrate the fact that, according to a May 5 report in Chinese state media, the powerful National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has signaled that a nationwide electronic system will be established by 2017 to track each Chinese citizen's credit history. This would include performance on meeting obligations connected to taxation, government transactions, finance, judicial matters, and traffic violations. But for the system to succeed, Chinese people will eventually need to buy in -- and so far, that's not happening.

China's economy, of course, still manages to function without a credit-scoring system. Chinese banks, all of which are state-owned, limit most of their lending to large businesses (preferably state-owned enterprises) and high-net-worth clients who have made significant deposits. Debit cards are far more common than credit cards. Urban residents can usually obtain collateralized loans for real estate and automobile purchases, but those without assets are left in a lurch. When faced with emergencies like a large medical bill, most Chinese families cannot pull out credit cards; instead, they draw down on their savings accounts or borrow money from loved ones. Similarly, small and medium-sized private businesses in China have often had to rely on the so-called shadow banking system to raise money, which despite the nefarious moniker, simply involves raising capital outside the formal bank loan system through personal connections or off-balance-sheet loans.

In theory, the proposed nationwide credit-scoring system would further grease the wheels of China's growing market economy by rewarding the punctual and punishing the dishonest. In a May 5 article published on the Weibo (Chinese Twitter) account of CCTV, China's state-owned television station, economist Dai Xianfeng opined that such a system would "lower transaction costs," "improve economic vitality," and make individuals' lives better by enabling them to obtain credit cards, lower-rate mortgages, and other financial products.

But many of China's Internet users are worried less about the trustworthiness of other citizens and more about the trustworthiness of the government that would steward the new system. According to the timeline announced by the NDRC, by June 2014 the government will introduce a plan to assign unique credit-tracking numbers to Chinese citizens, likely based on the current identity card number that each adult already possesses. (It would do the same for companies and organizations.)

The proposal invokes unpleasant memories of a Kafkaesque system that began under Chairman Mao Zedong. Under the Communist Party, a mysterious dang'an, or file, on each urban resident recorded political, administrative, or personal transgressions and followed everyone for life from schools to work units. As then-New York Times Beijing correspondent Nicholas Kristof reported in 1992, dang'an was a "part of China's complex system of social control and surveillance," but it had started to lose relevance even then as Chinese become ever less reliant on the party for job placement and mobility. These days, while dang'an may still matter to ambitious party members, the system no longer holds the sway it once did over ordinary people. In 2013, CCTV published a special report called "Is Dang'an Becoming a Pile of Wastepaper?" in which a casual online survey revealed that 74 percent of respondents believed that dang'an had no relevance to their lives.

Some in China worry that the new credit system now threatens to revive the intense control that authorities once exercised unchecked. One Weibo user commented called the idea "dang'an by another name" and asked whether those with oversight of the new system would be trustworthy. "Will individuals know what is written about them?" Another hoped that "political factors would not be a part of the system" because it could be used against those who disagree with the party line. Many Internet commentators also worry that in cases of stolen identities or clerical errors, ordinary people would have little recourse to clear their names.

These are not idle anxieties. Abuse of the dang'an system was exposed in the widely publicized case of Tang Guoji, a man from central Hunan province who had graduated from a teacher's college in 1983. Tang discovered in 2002 that the reason no work unit or graduate school had been willing to take him for the past 20 years was a mysterious piece of paper in his dang'an that declared him mentally unstable. The document had been placed there by college advisors who held a grudge against Tang for blowing the whistle on management problems at the school. Tang had no idea this damning evaluation existed at all for almost two decades, even after years of petitioning the government for job placement and fair treatment, to no avail. Tang eventually began a career as a successful freelance writer, but the damage to his life was immeasurable.

Internet users also muse about the irony that Chinese officials, widely perceived to be corrupt and untrustworthy, are tasked with keeping credit files on citizens. Ye Tan, a columnist for Caijing, a top financial magazine in China, commented that the credit system should "start with the government" because "having a record of the trustworthiness of the powerful is more important in promoting a market economy than keeping records on ordinary people."

This anxiety also has a basis in fact. China's well-connected have sometimes shown themselves willing to fabricate files in their dang'an for personal gain. In June 2004, a midlevel cadre in northwestern Liaoning province named Cao Zhongwu was sentenced to death for corruption and falsifying official documents after it emerged that he had created fake documents and certificates to supplement his dang'an for about seven years in order to gain promotions. By the time he was caught in 2001, Cao had embezzled about $250,000 and taken $150,000 in bribes. (He was executed in September 2005.)

Of course, online vitriol alone may not be enough to derail a much-needed development from coming to pass. But authorities surely monitor web chatter to gauge public opinion; if the government is ambivalent or internally divided about the scope or timing of a new credit system, online outcry could tip the scales. During the November 2013 party plenum, President Xi Jinping called for the market to play a "decisive role" in China's economic life. Perhaps it would be best for the government to follow its own advice and hand the credit-scoring business to private enterprise instead.

风动心静

------呵呵，尽是胡扯，所谓信用关系，主要体现在债权债务的关系上，与过去的档案有个毛关系呀？