The Credit Reference Center (CRC) of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) says it has amassed credit information on more than one billion natural people in China.
As of the end December 2020 CRC had collected data on over 1.1 billion natural people, as well as 60.92 million enterprises and other organisations, according to data released by CRC chair Zhang Zihong (张子红) at a press conference held on 25 January.
Zhang said that in 2020 an average of 8.66 million personal credit searches were made each day, as well as approximately 190,000 enterprise credit searches, with one day peaks that year of 14.45 million and 1.17 million respectively.
CRC was first established in March 2006 with the approval of the State Commission Office for Republic Sector Reform as a legal person entity that is directly subordinate to the Chinese central bank.
In June 2019 PBOC officials announced that CRC had become the world’s largest credit information system in terms of population and data coverage, providing standardised credit files for every single person or company in China that engages in credit-related activities.
As of June 2019 PBOC’s credit system had collected information on 990 million natural persons and 25.91 million enterprises and other institutions, while each day the system was used to make approximately 5.5 million inquiries on the credit standing of individuals and 300,000 inquiries on enterprises.