With the advancement in technology and big data in recent years, disciplinary systems present an increasing tendency towards digitization. China’s digital Social Credit system, established to evaluate individuals, businesses, and local institutions’ trustworthiness, serves as a typical model. Through the lens of Michel Foucault’s account of disciplinary power and Max Weber’s account of rationality and disenchantment, the paper is directed to analyze China’s digital credit system’s implications on the public’s moral governance rights. Admittedly, the digital scoring system offers advantages in regard to social stability and public utility; it is suitable to China’s ideological, historical, and geographical character. However, its digital mass surveillance, through fusing value and instrumental rationality and oversimplifying morality, aggravates the spiritual crisis of disenchantment. In return, the collective disenchantment of the public leads to problematic social and political consequences. In response, the paper offers legislative and propagandize related policy suggestions to allay the undesirable outcomes of digital discipline.
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A 2024 study studied this question.