Opinions of the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council on Improving the Social Credit System

The social credit system is a foundational institution of the market economy. To strengthen and improve the social credit system, with the approval of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, the following guidelines are hereby presented.

I. Overall Requirements Adhere to Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era as the guiding principle, thoroughly implement the spirit of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and the Second and Third Plenary Sessions of the 20th Central Committee, uphold and strengthen the leadership of the Party, maintain the general tone of pursuing progress while ensuring stability, fully, accurately, and comprehensively apply the new development philosophy, and consistently promote government guidance, market-driven approaches, and collaborative societal efforts. At the same time, we will champion integrity culture, integrate public credit information with market-based credit data, and ensure that credit-based rewards and punishments are both reasonable and lawful. Our goal is to build a robust social credit system that covers all types of entities, features unified institutional frameworks, and fosters co-creation, sharing, and joint utilization. This system will drive deep integration between the social credit framework and every aspect of economic and social development, providing strong support for accelerating the establishment of a nationwide unified market, safeguarding fair and orderly market competition, and promoting high-quality development.

II. Building a Social Credit System That Covers All Types of Entities

(1) Deepen the development of government integrity. Strengthen the mechanism for government agencies to honor their commitments, conduct evaluations of governmental trustworthiness, and refine the criteria for identifying instances of government misconduct as well as the corresponding punitive measures. If the government and its departments (including subordinate units) engage in acts of dishonesty in areas such as public resource transactions, investment promotion, talent recruitment, public-private partnerships, industrial support initiatives, investment and financing activities, or enterprise-related fee collection, they will be recorded accordingly under the credit system, thereby restricting their eligibility to apply for various types of fiscal funding and projects, as well as participation in pilot programs, demonstrations, and recognition events. Effectively leverage the role of the list of untrustworthy institutions, enhancing their self-regulatory capabilities in terms of integrity. Additionally, reinforce integrity management and education efforts among public officials.

(2) Strengthen the building of creditworthiness among business entities. Enhance credit management for business entities, support them in refining their compliance systems and effectively controlling credit risks, and guide them toward honest and trustworthy operations that honor commitments. Based on comprehensive public credit assessments, establish a robust enterprise credit evaluation system. While ensuring the confidentiality and security of sensitive information, increase transparency in disclosing the credit status of state-owned enterprises. Encourage business entities to proactively share their credit information with credit service providers, continuously improving and enriching their credit records.

(3) Accelerate the development of social organization credit systems. Strengthen the management, sharing, and public disclosure of credit information for social organizations, enhance credit supervision over these entities, encourage social organizations to practice integrity and self-discipline, and elevate their internal governance standards. Industry regulators and business supervisory units should urge industry associations and chambers of commerce to bolster their integrity-building efforts, guide them in conducting credit evaluations and other activities in accordance with laws and regulations, and leverage their roles in guiding member behavior, enforcing rules, and safeguarding members' rights and interests.

(Four) Promote the orderly development of natural person credit systems. Establish and improve comprehensive credit records for individuals in accordance with laws and regulations. Accelerate the implementation of credit management systems tailored to key professional groups, including those working in fields such as law, finance, accounting, auditing, healthcare, education, domestic services, construction engineering, ecological environment, and platform-based economies, as well as individuals who have obtained national vocational qualifications. Where conditions permit, local authorities and departments may initiate credit assessments for individuals, using these evaluations as a reference for designing incentive policies aimed at trustworthy entities. Importantly, the inclusion of non-credit information or personal private data into credit assessments is strictly prohibited.

(5) Comprehensively strengthen credit-building within the judicial and law enforcement systems. Enhance the development of judicial integrity in courts and procuratorates, thereby boosting the overall credibility of the judiciary. Increase the openness of judicial processes in accordance with the law, ensuring that the public has access to necessary information. Strengthen credit management for judicial and law enforcement personnel, establishing comprehensive credit records and a system of credit commitments for these professionals. Raise the costs associated with fraudulent litigation and related acts of dishonesty. Strictly enforce procedures for identifying individuals who fail to comply with court orders, while continuously refining measures to penalize such misconduct.

3. Strengthen the Data Foundation of the Social Credit System

(6) Establish comprehensive, complete, and accurate credit records. Strictly define the scope of public credit information; industry authorities shall, based on laws, administrative regulations, local statutes, or policy documents issued by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, identify public credit information within their respective domains and compile industry-specific credit records. For information classified as失信 (distrustworthy), clearly categorize and specify the severity of the失信 behavior. Implement unified catalog management for all public credit information, with the National Development and Reform Commission compiling and maintaining complete credit records for relevant entities.

(7) Strengthen the collection and sharing of credit information. Enhance the "central hub" function of the National Credit Information Sharing Platform for aggregating and sharing credit data, adhering to the principle of "sharing as the norm, non-sharing as the exception." Uniformly collect credit information from various sectors and, based on demand and in accordance with regulations, provide credit information services to relevant departments. Regularly conduct evaluations to assess the quality and effectiveness of data collection and sharing efforts. Promote deep integration and seamless data exchange between the National Credit Information Sharing Platform and industry-specific credit information systems. Additionally, explore ways to leverage technologies such as blockchain in credit information management, aiming to enhance the sharing of commercial contract information, industrial chain data, transaction details, and other critical data—while ensuring the protection of credit subjects' legitimate rights and interests as well as information security.

(8) Establish a unified public credit information disclosure system. Develop standardized rules for the uniform public disclosure of credit information. The "Credit China" website will centrally publish all types of public credit information; in principle, industry regulators will no longer disclose public credit information outside their respective areas of responsibility. The "Credit China" website will provide public access to credit information query services based on public-benefit principles. For public credit information already disclosed on the "Credit China" website, credit service agencies must ensure that the credit information they use matches exactly the content and duration of the publicly available information.

(9) Promote the orderly opening and circulation of public credit information. Develop management measures for the authorized operation of public credit information, supporting qualified operators to leverage their authorization in developing public credit data resources, marketing related products, and providing technical services. Strictly prohibit the unauthorized use or excessive access to public credit information beyond the designated scope. Establish clear entry standards and rules for the circulation of public credit information. Encourage business entities to legally and compliantly utilize public credit information to deliver public-benefit services. Explore mechanisms that ensure a fair sharing of the value and benefits derived from public credit information, while safeguarding the rights and interests associated with these assets in accordance with the law. Additionally, foster regional collaboration by encouraging cross-regional sharing of public credit information, mutual recognition of credit assessments, and coordinated implementation of credit-based incentives and penalties.

(10) Strengthen protection of credit information security. Establish a credit information security management mechanism for traceability and accountability for infringement, clearly defining security responsibilities at each link in the information transmission chain. Strictly enforce security protection responsibilities and standardize procedures for handling credit information. Enhance the security management level of credit information infrastructure. Develop and improve a robust emergency response mechanism for credit information security incidents.

IV. Improve the Mechanisms for Incentivizing Trustworthiness and Punishing Distrust

(11) Strengthen incentives for trustworthy behavior. Establish a comprehensive policy environment that fosters credit-based incentives, providing convenience or preferential treatment to entities with good credit records when accessing public services. Encourage platform enterprises to leverage big data resources effectively, enabling them to deliver targeted, market-oriented, and socially recognized incentives to trustworthy individuals and organizations. Additionally, support financial institutions in deeply exploring the value of credit information, continuously enhancing the ease with which trustworthy entities can obtain financing.

(12) Implement credit-based penalties in accordance with the law and regulations. Standardize the establishment of penalty measures, ensuring that the scope and severity of such penalties are determined reasonably and legally. Any areas designated for listing entities on the list of seriously untrustworthy subjects—particularly those involving measures that reduce the rights or increase the obligations of credit subjects—must be grounded in laws, administrative regulations, local statutes, or policy documents issued by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council. Industry authorities should specify, through departmental rules, the criteria and procedures for adding entities to and removing them from the list of seriously untrustworthy subjects. Once listed, these entities will face legal and regulatory restrictions or outright prohibitions when applying for government funding, seeking tax incentives, participating in public resource transactions, issuing stocks and bonds, competing for awards and honors, undergoing civil service recruitment, selection, transfer, or appointment processes, or engaging in open recruitment within public institutions. Additionally, lists of seriously untrustworthy subjects will be expanded to include sectors such as the real estate market, the internet industry, the human resources market, and medium- to long-term energy contracts. All credit-based penalty measures and the list of seriously untrustworthy subjects will be managed uniformly under a centralized, itemized system.

(13) Improve the unified credit repair system. Establish a robust, standardized, collaborative, and efficient credit repair framework that promotes seamless information sharing and scientific, effective processes. Encourage entities with credit issues to proactively rectify their失信行为. The National Development and Reform Commission will lead the effort to unify channels for credit information disclosure and repair, refine credit repair rules, and enhance coordination among judicial authorities, industry regulators, credit service providers, and other stakeholders. For entities that have successfully completed credit repair, their失信 information should be promptly removed from public disclosure, they should be delisted from relevant失信 lists, and any corresponding punitive measures should be lifted in accordance with laws and regulations.

V. Enhance the credit-based regulatory and governance mechanisms

(14) Implement tiered and categorized regulation based on credit ratings. The National Development and Reform Commission will lead the effort to refine the credit evaluation system, while departments in charge of various regions and industries will build upon the comprehensive public credit assessment to establish region-specific and industry-specific credit evaluation mechanisms. Based on these evaluation results, regulatory approaches will be optimized, enabling differentiated oversight tailored to different types of credit entities.

(Fifteen) Establish and improve the credit commitment system. Implement the credit commitment system in areas such as administrative approvals, certification matters, and credit restoration. When handling matters subject to the credit commitment system, if an applicant submits incomplete application materials but demonstrates good credit standing and provides a written commitment to furnish the missing documents within a specified timeframe, the application should be accepted first. Additionally, establish a mechanism for tracking the fulfillment of credit commitments. Encourage credit entities to proactively make public credit commitments to society.

(Sixteen) Promote the in-depth application of credit reports. Encourage the full utilization of credit reports in public management areas such as market access, administrative approvals, government procurement, investment promotion, and qualification reviews. Vigorously advocate replacing certificates verifying the absence of illegal or regulatory violations with specialized credit reports. Additionally, encourage the use of credit reports in market transactions like bidding and tendering, financing credit assessments, and business dealings.

(17) Strengthen credit supervision over government-concluded and government-guided contracts, ensuring their proper fulfillment. Intensify monitoring and verification of contract performance, promptly collecting information on the fulfillment status of government-concluded contracts and government-guided contracts into the National Credit Information Sharing Platform. The National Development and Reform Commission will incorporate verified contract performance data into the credit records of relevant entities, effectively enhancing the overall level of contract compliance.

(18) Promote credit-driven empowerment in grassroots governance. Strengthen the construction of rural credit systems, enhance the collection and sharing of agricultural-related credit information, clarify responsibility for data gathering, streamline and optimize data collection indicators and evaluation criteria, and elevate the credit assessment standards for farmers and new types of agricultural business entities. Additionally, encourage credit to empower community governance and support the development of credit-based parks and commercial districts.

(19) Enhance the legal and regulatory framework of the social credit system. Improve the unified social credit code system, further clarify the departments responsible for assigning codes to various entities, and establish robust mechanisms for sharing and verifying code-related data. Develop nationally unified standards for managing credit information. Promote the enactment of a Social Credit Construction Law, ensuring that credit regulations are integrated into relevant specialized laws and regulations. Strengthen comprehensive assessments conducted before introducing new credit policies, preventing the overgeneralization and misuse of credit management measures.

6. Enhance the Market-Oriented and Socialized Level of the Social Credit System  

(20) Vigorously foster the credit services market. Innovate business models such as credit evaluation, credit rating, credit scoring, credit reporting, credit verification, credit management, credit consulting, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) assessments, effectively supporting the development of a credit-based economy. Standardize the participation of credit service institutions in building the social credit system. Support financial credit information databases in legally collecting credit data from the financial sector, delivering more convenient and high-quality basic credit reporting services. Optimize the layout of the personal credit market, expanding the supply of personal credit products and services. Enhance and refine the corporate credit market, exploring opportunities to develop specialized corporate credit agencies focused on niche segments. Strengthen credit supervision comprehensively, fostering the orderly and healthy growth of the credit industry.

(21) Deeply advance credit financing and credit-based transactions. Relying on the nationwide integrated financing credit service platform network, expand the scope of credit information collection and sharing according to actual application needs, refine the enterprise financing enhancement mechanism anchored in credit information, effectively increase the proportion of credit loans for small, medium, and micro-sized enterprises, and support qualified credit rating agencies to participate in the operation of the financing credit service platform. Encourage credit service institutions to collect commercial contract performance information in compliance with laws and regulations, and promote the orderly adoption of credit-based sales models such as trade credit, installment payments, and financial leasing. Strengthen information disclosure for commercial bills and enhance the credit accountability system in the bill market. Furthermore, legally and regulatively include business entities that maliciously evade debt obligations into the list of seriously untrustworthy individuals or entities as appropriate.

(22) Strengthen credit-building in the platform economy sector. Enhance the sharing of public credit information and operational data from platform enterprises, and guide platform companies to establish credit management systems within their platforms as well as collaborative mechanisms for addressing trust violations across platforms. Implement differentiated management and services based on the credit profiles of merchants operating on their platforms, offering greater incentives and convenience to law-abiding, trustworthy entities, while imposing restrictions—within platform rules—on businesses that engage in illegal or dishonest practices. Additionally, step up credit oversight for online influencers, self-media platforms, and multi-channel content distribution service providers (MCN agencies), among others.

(23) Supporting High-Level Opening-Up. On the premise of ensuring security, we will promote the cross-border flow of credit information data in accordance with laws and regulations, steadily advance cross-border credit cooperation, and facilitate mutual recognition of credit products such as credit ratings and credit reports across borders. We will also support domestic credit service providers in collaborating with countries jointly building the Belt and Road Initiative and BRICS nations to deliver independent, impartial, third-party credit services. Furthermore, we will strengthen international credit reporting exchanges, actively fostering credit rating agencies that are both globally competitive and influential. Finally, we will encourage the international expansion of China’s domestic credit rating agencies.

7. Strengthen Organization and Implementation

Under the centralized and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee, all regions and relevant departments should closely align with local realities to effectively implement these guidelines, fostering a collaborative work framework characterized by coordinated efforts from top to bottom, clear division of responsibilities, and joint management. The National Development and Reform Commission and the People's Bank of China should strengthen overall coordination, while each relevant department must earnestly fulfill its accountability for credit-building within their respective areas, thereby pooling resources and enhancing synergy. At the same time, we must systematically advance the establishment of national demonstration zones for social credit system construction, ensuring the robust implementation of post-evaluation mechanisms for these zones. Additionally, continuous city-level credit monitoring should be conducted to promote transparency and accountability. We will also vigorously promote a culture of integrity, widely disseminate integrity education, and rigorously enforce regulations to increase public awareness and exposure of serious acts of dishonesty—while upholding the law. Furthermore, we encourage news media to actively engage in promoting integrity and exercising effective public oversight. Moreover, we must fully leverage the exemplary role of trustworthy individuals and organizations, consistently organizing initiatives such as the "Integrity Star" campaign and the "Integrity Promotes Business Development Month," thereby nurturing a societal ethos that values trustworthiness and delivers on commitments. Finally, we will promptly summarize and share best practices and successful models. For any significant issues or matters, we will promptly report them to the Party Central Committee and the State Council according to established procedures.