Xiamen: The city that gives residents a score and rewards good behaviour [Eye on Fujian series]

To write about Fujian is to begin with the sea.

This is a province shaped by ports, ferry routes, merchant families and journeys that extend far beyond China’s southeastern coast. For centuries, people from Fujian sailed to Southeast Asia, built businesses, sent money home and carried with them something that mattered as much as capital: credibility. In southern Fujian, commerce was never only about contracts. It was also about whether one kept one’s word. A familiar Minnan (闽南) saying, he qi sheng cai (和气生财) — harmony brings prosperity — captures that instinct well: trust and cooperation are not embellishments of economic life, but part of its foundation.

That older logic has not disappeared. In Xiamen, one of Fujian’s most outward-looking cities, it has been given a distinctly modern form.

It is called the Bailu Score (白鹭分), or “White Egret Score”, named after the bird that symbolises the city. Launched on 5 July 2018, with its first public application introduced on 1 October that year, it is, on paper, a personal credit score developed under the Xiamen municipal government — the first scheme of its kind in Fujian. In practice, it is something more interesting: a way of turning trust into a usable part of everyday life.

The score draws on public sector and service data to build a personal credit profile. Its model incorporates five broad dimensions: basic information, positive credit behaviour, breaches of trust, credit repair and actual credit use. The policy instinct behind it is straightforward. In Xiamen, trust is not treated as a slogan. It is treated as something that ought to make life easier.

The first thing to understand about the Bailu Score is that it is not primarily a banking product. It is a civic one. It appears not only in loan decisions, but in the ordinary places where city life can become wearing: hospitals, car parks, libraries, service counters, insurance claims, even home-buying information.

By December 2025, the Bailu Score had been connected to 128 public-benefit service scenarios, with more than 3.63 million registered users, over 129 million uses, and an estimated RMB 24.5 billion in economic benefits. Those figures are striking, but the appeal of the system lies in small, repeated gains: fewer queues, fewer deposits, easier access, faster settlement.

Its best-known application is credit-based healthcare. In Xiamen, residents with a qualifying score can use a “treat first, pay later” service in public hospitals. Instead of repeatedly topping up hospital accounts and queuing to pay before every consultation or test, they receive treatment first and settle the bill afterwards through a credit line arranged by the platform and participating financial institutions. The scheme sits within a broader credit system that has brought Xiamen national recognition.

The city was among China’s first model cities for social credit development, and the Bailu Score has also been recognised as a national “Integrity in Commerce” case. But the value of the system is easiest to appreciate in moments of strain. For one sanitation worker who needed urgent treatment after an acute heart attack, it meant being admitted without first having to find money for a deposit.

This is not merely an administrative improvement. It addresses one of the most familiar problems in public services: the mismatch between bureaucratic procedure and actual human behaviour. People arriving at hospitals are often anxious, distracted, pressed for time, or simply unprepared for a sudden bill. At such moments, even minor frictions — another form, another queue, another payment step — carry disproportionate weight.

That same concern with removing small but consequential burdens appears in another extension: commercial insurance claims. By linking hospital data directly with insurers, Xiamen has built a platform that allows many claims to be processed digitally, without repeated paperwork. As a result, reimbursement times have fallen from seven to 15 days to roughly one to three days. The service already connects ten hospitals and ten insurance companies, and has handled more than 20,000 online claims. Again, the underlying principle is simple: public services work better when the user is not required to shuttle information from one institution to another.

The Bailu Score has also spread into everyday services that seem modest until one adds them together.

In credit parking, residents with qualifying scores can leave first and pay later. Xiamen has launched a city-level credit parking platform that initially covers more than 180 car parks, offering users with scores of 650 and above a smoother “drive out first, settle later” experience. Anyone who has sat in a queue at a crowded car-park exit knows how much these small delays shape the feel of a city. Removing them is not glamorous, but it changes daily life.

In credit borrowing, residents can use the public library system without paying deposits and can borrow more books at a time. In government services, higher-scoring residents in some districts receive faster handling or simplified procedures. The benefits do not stop at the city’s edge. A Xiamen resident visiting Zhengzhou found that mutual recognition of city credit scores brought real discounts and other small conveniences along the way. Once trust becomes portable, convenience can travel with it.

What ties all this together is not technology for its own sake. It is a particular way of thinking about urban efficiency.

Cities do not become easier to live in only because they build more infrastructure. They also become easier to live in when they reduce search costs, save time and make routine interactions less mentally taxing. Good policy often works through details: a waived deposit, a shorter wait, a simpler claims process, a cleaner flow from one institution to another. Xiamen has understood that the daily economy is built from these repeated micro-interactions.

This matters even more in a city shaped by mobility.

Like many successful coastal centres, Xiamen depends on people arriving, settling and entering local networks quickly: graduates, professionals, service workers, entrepreneurs and families from elsewhere in Fujian and beyond. But newcomers often face a simple problem. They may be capable, stable and economically active, yet still appear “unknown” in local systems. That raises the cost of trust.

Xiamen has tried to narrow that gap through Bailu Score services for new residents, combining public records with other forms of credit-related information to build a more usable profile for people without a long local track record. Financial institutions can then offer products related to entrepreneurship, housing, education, healthcare and consumption with greater confidence. In effect, the city is making it easier for reliable newcomers to become visible.

That matters for growth. A city does not thrive simply by attracting people; it thrives by helping them settle, borrow, spend and plan with less uncertainty.

There is a distinctly Fujian quality to all this. Another well-known Minnan phrase, ai pin cai hui ying (爱拼才会赢) — roughly, “those who dare to strive will win” — celebrates effort, initiative and resilience. But striving works best when institutions help effort meet opportunity. A person can be hardworking and responsible, yet still lose time and energy to systems that do not know how to recognise reliability. The Bailu Score, at its best, helps close that gap.

It also offers a broader lesson about digital development.

The digital economy is often discussed in terms of platforms, finance, artificial intelligence and large-scale data systems. Xiamen’s experience points to another side of it. Digital tools can also be used to make civic life more legible and more responsive. The point is not technology for its own sake. It is better matching — between a person and a service, between reliability and reward, between public administration and the actual rhythms of daily life.

In that sense, the Bailu Score points to a different kind of development strategy. It suggests that one path to growth lies in making the ordinary workings of a city less costly, more trustworthy and more responsive.

That may sound less dramatic than a skyline or a new industrial corridor. But in places with strong commercial traditions — places like Fujian — it may prove just as important.

The white egret has long symbolised Xiamen’s grace and calm. Today, it also stands for something more practical: the idea that in a modern city, trust should not sit quietly in the background. It should open doors, shorten queues and make the economy work a little better for everyone.

Related: [Photos] From the balcony: A writer’s love letter to Xiamen | The case of Xiamen: Are special economic zones in China no longer special?