‘Credit Is a Basket’

In 2019, the National Health Commission of China announced a nation-wide plan to incorporate blood donation into the country’s emerging informational infrastructure: the social credit system (SCS). Through analysis of comments from Weibo, one of China’s largest social media sites, alongside news articles and official government announcements from the time, we follow the figure of the basket, which we regard as vernacular critique. By analysing the formation of trust indicators, contestations over their commensurability, and the prospect of converting between moral deeds and financial advantage, we aim to augment understandings of the ways that quantification practices are, and become, moral projects.