The Social Credit System (Chinese: 社会信用体系; pinyin: shèhuì xìnyòng tǐxì) is a national blacklist being developed by the government of the People’s Republic of China under General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping's administration. The program initiated regional trials in 2009, before launching a national pilot with eight credit scoring firms in 2014. It was first introduced formally by then Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, on October 20th, 2011 during one of the State Council Meetings. In 2018, these efforts were centralized under the People's Bank of China with participation from the eight firms. By 2020, it was intended to standardize the assessment of citizens' and businesses' economic and social reputation, or 'Social Credit'.