Ruling through Division: Categorizing People and Resources in Contemporary China (CatCh)

China’s social credit system has introduced a new system of electronic black-listing which has attracted much attention in Western studies of the system. While the digitalization of such categorization is novel, categorization of people and their resources into large manageable, easy to identify categories as a means of organizing China has a long history. Historically such categories have taken many forms. Many of these historical forms are central to social organization and well- documented, e.g. the household registration (hukou) system, clans, gender and ethnicity. The different forms of categorizations, are, however, rarely studied together, and the impact of new technologies and new ideas on existing forms of classifications is unknown.