China’s corporate social credit system (CSCS) is a big data project aimed at evaluating the “trustworthiness” of all business entities registered in the country; it runs parallel to a similar evaluation system for individuals. However, the existing literature focuses on the individual social credit system, with much less attention paid to the corresponding system for corporations. The CSCS is linked to a system of rewards and punishments for compliant and non-compliant firms alike, and represents a futuristic strategy of automated screening to determine which enterprises are allowed market access and benefits. In addition to being a RegTech project that enabling the government to use big data to assess companies and personalize supervision accordingly, CSCS is also a corporate compliance programme, in which the party-state sets the criteria and establishes a collective enforcement scheme that increases the cost of non-compliance. It is, therefore, vital for all enterprises doing business in China to understand the design and operation of CSCS. In 2014, the State Council published the Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System (2014–2020), which set off a comprehensive guideline for the system and induced a “waterfall effect” of government agency involvement in the CSCS at descending levels of government. Overarching design features, such as reward and punishment systems and policies on data collection and storage, are established at the national level, with each provincial, city, and county government responsible for setting up a CSCS specific to its locality. In addition, a digitized evaluation system that generates a score for each locally registered enterprise will eventually be established locally throughout the country. Since local governments can establish their own assessment criteria that fit their local conditions, conducting a comparative study to understand the commonalities and differences among standards adopted by local governments is, therefore, a crucial first step to understanding the design characteristics of CSCS. Furthermore, to understand the operational aspect and practical implications of CSCS, this study will empirically investigate the distribution of scores and the determinants of CSCS by collecting scores published by provincial governments. This empirical study will explore what “trustworthiness” really means in China and provide insights into the potential effects of the CSCS on firm behavior and economic performance. The aim of this study is to further the understanding of CSCS, a developing social governance project, and its implications on corporate behavior modification and Chinese state capitalism.