How can the construction of social credit system in the context of digitalization empower grassroots governance? — A Case Study of “Moral Bank” in Yuyao City, Zhejiang Province

   The 20th Party Congress report proposed to improve the grid-based management, refinement of services, information technology to support the grassroots governance platform, and improve the urban and rural community governance system [1, p. 24]. Grass-roots social governance is the basis of the entire national governance system, which concerns the vital interests of millions of people. At present, the government concentrates funds and material resources on infrastructure construction, and while the hardware environment at the grassroots level is improving, the construction of soft power is seriously lagging behind, and residents’ awareness of participation and public spirit are seriously lacking, so grassroots governance needs to be transformed. The basic function of social credit system is to form incentives and constraints for various subjects with the help of credit evaluation mechanism, so as to realize effective social governance. The establishment of social credit system can not only create an environment to serve social governance, but also provide important support for the modernization of social governance system and national governance capacity. Thus, under the strategic choice of building a comprehensive social credit system, combining an effective social credit system with grassroots social governance is an inevitable choice for China’s future development. Meanwhile, along with the accelerated development of digitization in China, the digitization of social credit system construction has become a powerful boost to promote credit governance. The digital transformation of social credit system can fully activate the path of credit information formation and collection in the traditional social credit system, optimize the operation mechanism and application scenario of credit evaluation mechanism, and thus maximize the functional utility of credit-enabled grassroots social governance. Based on this, this paper attempts to take the many challenges faced by grassroots governance as a logical starting point, take the “moral bank” in Yuyao, Zhejiang Province as a case study, trace how the construction of social credit system empowers grassroots social governance in the context of digitalization, explore the operation mechanism and practical effects of it, and extract corresponding insights.