It’s a credit system for businesses. It’s for consumers but I think mainly for other businesses to assesses the trustworthiness of individuals who own a business. So if you own some clothing shop known for reselling used clothing as new, you’ll be dinged and be punished. But I believe that only local governments have implemented it, so it’s like a few places have it but westerners extrapolated to Xi watching your every move

Wired did an article on it back in 2019 that;s far less damning than most western sources. How the West Got China’s Social Credit System Wrong | WIRED

The simple answer is that “social credit” is a both a policy framework and broad initiative adopted by the Chinese government aimed at enforcing market regulations, implementing a corporate credit system, increasing institutional credibility, and ultimately becoming a building block¹ for the construction of a “harmonious socialist society”. It’s the evolving result of decades of (usually campaign-style) policies implemented to control and prevent corruption and corporate malfeasance. China’s growing domestic consumption market also created the need for a centralized financial credit system.

Scope of social credit

• Businesses
• Individuals
• Government institutions

Examples of corporate SCS mechanisms

• National Credit Information Sharing Platform (NCISP). Operated by the state planning agency, meant to integrate all national/regional corporate regulatory data. Here’s the website where you can search for specific entities and whether they have been penalized: https://www.gsxt.gov.cn/index.html. And here’s a web portal for more: https://www.creditchina.gov.cn/
• Unified Social Credit Code. Number assigned to corporate entities.
• Blacklists. These are produced by government agencies according to their jurisdiction. These cover a range of violations and infractions. To my knowledge, no national blacklist (or analogue) exists at the present.
• Punishment/reward system. The entity is penalized by agencies connected to the NCISP within their powers. Here’s a list of approved punishments (including punishments for individuals).

That should be enough for a basic overview of the current state of SCS. I didn’t go over the experimental pilot programs because those have only ever been implemented at a municipal level and it seems that their methods (such as point scoring system) have been rejected by the national government. There is no indication that the national government is interested in tracking the violations of social norms by individuals.

You can find more primary sources on Chinalawtranslate and Stanford’s DigiChina.

1. SCS planning document