A website containing the credit history of some Chinese residents and firms was launched on Monday, the latest push in an ongoing effort to establish a credit rating system in China.
More than 1.13 million pieces of information on factors that affect a business or individual's credit score, such as tax avoidance and failure to follow court rulings, is now publicly available on creditchina.gov.cn.
The website is the result of a multi-departmental collaboration, including the State Administration of Taxation, Supreme People's Court, National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the China Securities Regulatory Commission.
The website is operated by the State Information Center, a government think tank under the NDRC, China's top economic planner.
At a recent inter-ministry meeting, NDRC deputy head Lian Weiliang urged different governmental agencies to share poor credit data scores so that they could be incorporated into the administrative approval consideration, and offenders would be punished.
Compared with some advanced economies, China's credit system is still in its infancy, and it is still not common for Chinese to use credit information providers to check credit scores.
