China Successfully Crushes All Dissent

[Kaitzilla]

I'm impressed that a country of 1.4 billion people can be governed in such a manner.

China can now have a President for life now that term limits have been removed.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-43361276

The biggest factor for crushing dissent is the Social Credit System.
The government will give everyone a score starting in 18 months, and people with bad scores will have their freedoms taken away.
http://www.businessinsider.com/chin...-say-its-making-them-better-people-already-10

When your score gets low enough, you will start experiencing negative effects in your life.
1) Denied plane tickets and train tickets
2) Throttled internet speeds
3) Kids banned from best schools
4) Denied the best jobs
5) Denied the best hotels
6) Denied loans and credit cards
7) Placed on a blacklist for potential employers to consult
8) Penalized on online dating sites

Not enough to kill you, but enough to ensure you remain a Loser until you change your behavior.

When your score gets high enough, you get perks in the opposite direction!

Things that lower your score include

Like private credit scores, a person's social score can move up and down depending on their behaviour. The exact methodology is a secret — but examples of infractions include bad driving, smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games and posting fake news online.

And don't think this Orwellian nightmare is a bad thing!
The majority of Chinese already approve of it.
It becomes mandatory for all people in 2020.
By the time it gets fully implement, people won't even want to dissent from the government.

China has made great strides to being a cashless society, so it should work in theory.
https://www.wired.com/story/age-of-social-credit/

I lived in China for the better part of a decade but left in 2014, before mobile payments had fully taken hold. Today $5.5 trillion in mobile payments are made every year in China. (In contrast, the US mobile payments market in 2016 was worth roughly $112 billion.) When I returned for a visit in August, I was determined to be a part of the new cashless China. So I signed up for Alipay and Zhima Credit a few hours after emerging bleary-eyed from the plane. Because I lacked a transaction history, I immediately faced what felt like an embarrassing judgment: a score of 550.

On my first day in Shanghai, I opened Zhima Credit to scan a yellow bike that I found parked at an angle on the sidewalk. China’s bike-sharing culture had, like mobile payments, emerged out of nowhere, and Shanghai’s streets were littered with brightly colored bikes, deposited wherever the riders pleased. A scan of a bike’s QR code revealed a four-digit number that unlocked the back wheel, and a ride across town cost roughly 15 cents. Because of my middling score, however, I had to pay a $30 deposit before I could scan my first bike. Nor could I get deposit-free hotel stays or GoPro rentals, or free umbrella rentals. I belonged to the digital underclass.

If the soft crushing of dissent doesn't do it for you, then there is the medium kind.
Re-education camps!

China's most western province has had big problems with Muslims lately, so the government, unlike ours after every school shooting, is handling it.
http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-life-like-in-xinjiang-reeducation-camps-china-2018-5

Almost 1 million Muslims in concentration re-education camps!

Hour upon hour, day upon day, Omir Bekali and other detainees in far western China's new indoctrination camps had to disavow their Islamic beliefs, criticize themselves and their loved ones and give thanks to the ruling Communist Party.

When Bekali, a Kazakh Muslim, refused to follow orders each day, he was forced to stand at a wall for five hours at a time. A week later, he was sent to solitary confinement, where he was deprived of food for 24 hours. After 20 days in the heavily guarded camp, he wanted to kill himself.

"The psychological pressure is enormous, when you have to criticize yourself, denounce your thinking — your own ethnic group," said Bekali, who broke down in tears as he described the camp. "I still think about it every night, until the sun rises. I can't sleep. The thoughts are with me all the time."

Since last spring, Chinese authorities in the heavily Muslim region of Xinjiang have ensnared tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of Muslim Chinese — and even foreign citizens — in mass internment camps. This detention campaign has swept across Xinjiang, a territory half the area of India, leading to what a U.S. commission on China last month said is "the largest mass incarceration of a minority population in the world today."

To put teeth in the Muslim crackdown, there have been:
1) Long beard and face covering bans
2) Children 18 and under not allowed in mosques.
3) Muslim merchants being forced to sell alcohol and tobacco. (Hah, take that Christian cake sellers!)
4) Public servants banned from fasting during Ramadan.

All those who dissent are arrested and sent to camps to be forcefully "re-educated"

In a June 2017 paper published by a state-run journal, a researcher from Xinjiang's Communist Party School reported that most of 588 surveyed participants did not know what they had done wrong when they were sent to re-education. But by the time they were released, nearly all — 98.8 percent— had learned their mistakes, the paper said.

Almost 99% had learned from their mistakes! What a record.

Even foreigners have learned not to dissent from China.
An American got fired for clicking "Like" on a Free Tibet post.
Keep that in mind if you criticize China for conquering Taiwan some day in the future if you like eating food.
https://boingboing.net/2018/01/15/willfull-liking.html


In conclusion, now that democracy is declining around the world and big data has given all the tools totalitarian states need to control their populations forever, it's time to stop deluding ourselves and get off the freedom train.

Safety is much more important than rights like free speech and the ability to own guns.
Only dangerous individuals would ever want to own a gun or criticize the government who only wants to help its people.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The "best" part is that if someone doesn't like you, how many video games is "too many", what constitutes "bad driving", or which news is "fake" can be, will be, likely already are very fluid concepts when it comes to people actually enforcing these.

But we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking we're too far behind. People have been held accountable for liking a facebook post in Europe too among other things, it's not just that Hitler dog trolling in UK that saw jail time (which nevertheless was from a legal perspective a pathetic showing by UK legal system).

And of course the social credit system "works". Saying otherwise is fake news and as we all know, that's easy enough to correct with "re-education".

 

[Cutlass]

Man, these people are going to give Republicans IDEAS.

 

[Traitorfish]

China can now have a President for life now that term limits have been removed.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-43361276

See, what I don't get about this is, when we did all decide that the Chinese presidency was actually that central to the Chinese political system? Mao left the office in 1958. Deng never held it at all. It seems more likely that this move has more to do with faction-politics within the Communist Party leadership than a straightforwardly Putinesque grasp for personal power.

I'm impressed that a country of 1.4 billion people can be governed in such a manner.

Realistically, it can't. Regimes can't simply legislate a perfect social order into billing, however much they might wish to maintain they image that they can. Else, every China would be brimming with iron foundries and entirely free of locust.

Most of this is an excercise in power for power's sake- more than that, its a theatre of power, a performance that they hope will be just convincing enough that people will believe it. If we declare that we are banning X, Y and Z, and that we are making A, B and C mandatory, then perhaps people will behave as if those things are actually prohibited or obligatory, because what kind of government would make these sorts of rules if they couldn't enforce them? And therein lies the problem, because no government would declare these sorts of pettily draconian laws unless they couldn't enforce them; no regime with a secure and confident grip on power would need to micro-manage its citizens in such a fashion, because there would be no way in which a cigarette, a video game or a beard could actually threaten them.

I mean, how do you ban people from fasting? What does that even mean, in practical terms? It's something that only the most diseased bureaucratic mind could conjour up, and if those are the people holding the reigns of power in the CCP, they have every reason to be scared.

 

[Moriarte]

I mean, how do you ban people from fasting? What does that even mean, in practical terms? It's something that only the most diseased bureaucratic mind could conjour up, and if those are the people holding the reigns of power in the CCP, they have every reason to be scared.

I think it shouldn't come as a surprise, when a country determined in their atheist ways commands you to leave religion at home and out of public life. There are other perfectly fine countries where you have to pray to Allah five times a day or else there is punishment. Life would be hard hard hard for an outspoken atheist there too. It's a tradition, their way of life you have to respect even when you are a minority. Why should we declare them diseased, why condemn China and Saudi Arabia when majority of the local population approves of their respective ideologies? Help me understand.

 

[Traitorfish]

I think it shouldn't come as a surprise, when a country determined in their atheist ways commands you to leave religion at home and out of public life. There are other perfectly fine countries where you have to pray to Allah five times a day or else there is punishment. Life would be hard hard hard for an outspoken atheist there too. It's a tradition, their way of life you have to respect even when you are a minority. Why should we declare them diseased, why condemn China and Saudi Arabia when majority of the local population approves of their respective ideologies? Help me understand.

I think you're missing the point. I'm not saying that it's absurd for a state to expect that it can impose prohibitions on religious practice. I'm saying that it's absurd for a state to impose a prohibition on fasting, specifically. It's absurd that the state should prohibit something that most people are doing most of the time, which is to say, not eating. How would a breach of the prohibition even be identified? How would accusations of the breech be substantiated? It's an unenforceable and therefore absurd law, and a state which imposes unenforceable laws alongside enforcable ones- such as the prohibition on face-coverings- is more or less openly acknowledging that it doesn't expect any of these prohibitions to be enforced in practice, or at least not in any consistent or coherent way.

The point, then, is not the practical outcome of the prohibition, but the assertion that the state has the authority to impose these prohibitions. But, that becomes self-defeating, when as I've argued the nature of the declarations contains the quiet admission that the state does not have the practical ability to do so. They've simply overplayed their hand. So giving the CCP some credit, the point is perhaps not even that the state has the power to impose these prohibitions, as that the state has the power to declare them, that it is the sole legitimate authority, however much weight its authority actually carries.

Honestly, I would expect a lot of this comes back to internal conflict in the CCP leadership. When states begin passing absurd and self-defeating laws, the target is very often not the public, still less those directly subject to the laws, but some other group or person within the state. "See", it allows them to posture, "We are upholding the revolutionary tradition. What are you doing?" China is no more a state without political divisions than any other, but those divisions are largely contained within the structures of the Communist Party and the state, which is naturally going to force political leaders down some routes that may appear strange to Westerners. I'm sure that Chinese observers would find some of our parliamentary drama equally baffling. I mean, I do, and I live here.

 

[caketastydelish]

Great job China! I wish we could have a regime like that here in the USA.

 

[Kozmos]

I think you're missing the point. I'm not saying that it's absurd for a state to expect that it can impose prohibitions on religious practice. I'm saying that it's absurd for a state to impose a prohibition on fasting, specifically. It's absurd that the state should prohibit something that most people are doing most of the time, which is to say, not eating. How would a breach of the prohibition even be identified?

Expenditures, informants, electronic surveillance (facial recognition, communication intercepts, geolocating via phone). All already ongoing for the 'untrustworthy' part of the population as some local adjacent friends are telling me. Enforceability is another matter, but the key part is that it is on the books and creates an air of fear. Stepping even slightly out of line will allow them to penalize you for breaking the law should they choose to.

 

[red_elk]

Some parts of this system are already implemented in the West - such as credit scoring system in banks.
Some others are not yet, but seem like a good idea. For example, penalizing bad drivers with more expensive car insurance.
Punishing people for things like fasting or buying video games sounds ridiculous and probably are just hearsays.
In the end, whether this system will work or not and whether it's a good idea will depend on details of implementation.

 

[Verbose]

Some parts of this system are already implemented in the West - such as credit scoring system in banks.

You're confusing market, and state. Which might be deliberate on your part.

 

[Verbose]

I'm impressed that a country of 1.4 billion people can be governed in such a manner.

China is also abducting foreign citizens dissenting with Chinese policies, in other countries, and making them disappear into the Chinese penal system:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/29/the-disappeared-china-renditions-kidnapping/

 

[Traitorfish]

Expenditures, informants, electronic surveillance (facial recognition, communication intercepts, geolocating via phone). All already ongoing for the 'untrustworthy' part of the population as some local adjacent friends are telling me. Enforceability is another matter, but the key part is that it is on the books and creates an air of fear. Stepping even slightly out of line will allow them to penalize you for breaking the law should they choose to.

But if these prohibitions are not practically enforceable, then there is no consistent relationship between breaching the prohibition and being punished. The relationship, rather, is between punishment and getting caught, and that doesn't prompt a populace to become more obedient, only to become more diligent in their law-breaking. We see this all the time in authoritarian regimes like North Korea, in which black marketeering can be punishable by death, but which none the less has a thriving black market. People don't need to stop doing what they're doing, they just need to not get caught, and it's unlikely that the Chinese government is exercising the sort of high-tech operation you're suggesting across thousands of square miles of rural North-Western frontier, and certainly not for the sake of catching some municipal administrator out when he tells his boss that he ate lunch at home.

The occasional law-breakers that do fall victim to the state prohibitions may create an atmosphere of fear, but it's a fear derived from uncertainty, a fear of a capricious and unreliable authority that doles out violence without method or rhythm. It turns the state into a violent alcoholic father, something to be avoided rather than to be obeyed; feared, yes, but not taken seriously. It frames the state as a source of power, but not of authority, and that is what any regime needs if it is able to survive.

The above prohibitions themselves are an acknowledgement of this: beards and fasting do not in themselves present any practical threat to the power of the state, but they hint towards an alternate source of authority, of political legitimacy. These measures are intended to repress that. But in doing so, the state risks presenting itself as an inconsistent despot. They have again over-reached themselves, and the only clear explanation is that the leadership aren't really interested in what the laws mean to the public, but what they mean to others within the leadership. We talk about the Chinese government as if it was a single unified force, but it's as riven by factions and factionalism as any other country- and quite probably moreso, because the factions are not forced into the sorts of unhappy electoral coalitions that force a certain degree of playing-nice beyond sheer mercenary self-interest.

 

[Kozmos]

But if these prohibitions are not practically enforceable, then there is no consistent relationship between breaching the prohibition and being punished. The relationship, rather, is between punishment and getting caught, and that doesn't prompt a populace to become more obedient, only to become more diligent in their law-breaking. We see this all the time in authoritarian regimes like North Korea, in which black marketeering can be punishable by death, but which none the less has a thriving black market. People don't need to stop doing what they're doing, they just need to not get caught, and it's unlikely that the Chinese government is exercising the sort of high-tech operation you're suggesting across thousands of square miles of rural North-Western frontier, and certainly not for the sake of catching some municipal administrator out when he tells his boss that he ate lunch at home.

The occasional law-breakers that do fall victim to the state prohibitions may create an atmosphere of fear, but it's a fear derived from uncertainty, a fear of a capricious and unreliable authority that doles out violence without method or rhythm. It turns the state into a violent alcoholic father, something to be avoided rather than to be obeyed; feared, yes, but not taken seriously. It frames the state as a source of power, but not of authority, and that is what any regime needs if it is able to survive.

The above prohibitions themselves are an acknowledgement of this: beards and fasting do not in themselves present any practical threat to the power of the state, but they hint towards an alternate source of authority, of political legitimacy. These measures are intended to repress that. But in doing so, the state risks presenting itself as an inconsistent despot. They have again over-reached themselves, and the only clear explanation is that the leadership aren't really interested in what the laws mean to the public, but what they mean to others within the leadership. We talk about the Chinese government as if it was a single unified force, but it's as riven by factions and factionalism as any other country- and quite probably moreso, because the factions are not forced into the sorts of unhappy electoral coalitions that force a certain degree of playing-nice beyond sheer mercenary self-interest.

You make a bunch of valid points, but I think you underestimate the effectiveness of such a system in development and the self-policing effect it produces. It has wisely incorporated both the stick and the carrot and has a variety of ways that can impede your freedom, geographically even in some case as it limits your transportation options. Your choices are to go off the grid (rural areas) and the black markets, which is severely self constraining since the jobs are largely not there anymore and exposes you to greater risk down the line. Knowing that you can make deals with the local administrator and enforcement agencies will be of little consolation when then they get a top down target with bonuses. I am well acquainted how the SFRY CP dispersed its blessings and punishments and it really wasn't a walk in the park if you choose not to be a member or openly religious. To imagine such a system networked, assisted by Big Data trends and electronic surveillance gives me the shivers and should unnerve anyone who knows humans biologically trend towards safety over personal liberty.

 

[Traitorfish]

You make a bunch of valid points, but I think you underestimate the effectiveness of such a system in development and the self-policing effect it produces. It has wisely incorporated both the stick and the carrot and has a variety of ways that can impede your freedom, geographically even in some case as it limits your transportation options. Your choices are to go off the grid (rural areas) and the black markets, which is severely self constraining since the jobs are largely not there anymore and exposes you to greater risk down the line. Knowing that you can make deals with the local administrator and enforcement agencies will be of little consolation when then they get a top down target with bonuses. I am well acquainted how the SFRY CP dispersed its blessings and punishments and it really wasn't a walk in the park if you choose not to be a member or openly religious. To imagine such a system networked, assisted by Big Data trends and electronic surveillance gives me the shivers and should unnerve anyone who knows humans biologically trend towards safety over personal liberty.

I'm not saying that the Chinese regime is not authoritarian, I'm saying that it is not all-powerful, and that the sorts of pettily draconian legislation indicated by the OP represent a dramatic over-reach. Even an elaborate system of incentivised snitching cannot ensure consistent or effective enforcement. Especially in a country with the sort of endemic corruption seen in China, it often just becomes another tool in the arsenal of bribe-seeking officials. Punishment is less likely to mean "I broke the law" than "I pissed off the wrong guy".

A certain amount of carrot-and-stick may achieve compliance with the rules, but that isn't the same thing as actual control, still less actual authority. Compliance is not obedience, still less respect. Above all, when compliance is premised on the ability of the state to respond with direct, short-term incentives- sudden violence or short-term gain- the if the state finds itself suddenly unable to dole out those incentives effectively, if it was ever able to do so in the first place, the system immediately begins to break down. Even in the OP, most of the "carrot" is clearly aimed towards the bourgeois and professional strata- what is a factory worker going to do with purely theoretical access to a high-end hotel or a prestigious school?- so the function there is less about enforcing the authority of the central state than enforcing a certain discipline on the strata of society already most likely to support the state, to temper their aspirations towards reform with a reminder of who is going to implementing the reform. There's very little in the way of carrot for the majority of Chinese, except perhaps the vague and ill-defined prospect of some sort of reference for future employers, and it's not at all clear that the kind of people making the hiring decisions would be interested in this sort of record.

A regime which announces unenforceable laws is clearly signalling that it does not intend to enforce those laws consistently. That may just be a pretext for persecuting dissidents, but China already has such means at its disposal, and far more efficient ones. So what could the purpose possibly be? I've suggested intra-party rivalry. That sounds like a more realistic proposition than a cyber-totalitarian regime taking an unusual interest in whether people in rural Xinjiang are trimming their beards and eating their lunch as frequently as guidelines indicate.

The most substantial measure in the OP is placing political dissidents in camps, and there's nothing particularly new about that, either within the PRC or in the world generally. Barbed wire and machines guns, at least, still carry the rosy glow of tradition.

 

[Kaitzilla]

So what could the purpose possibly be? I've suggested intra-party rivalry. That sounds like a more realistic proposition than a cyber-totalitarian regime taking an unusual interest in whether people in rural Xinjiang are trimming their beards and eating their lunch as frequently as guidelines indicate.

Right, there is more to it than just making people act a certain way.
It will apply to businesses too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System

The goal of the initiative according to the Planning Outline is “raising the awareness for integrities and the level of credibility within society.”[11] The Social Credit System is presented as an important means to perfect the “socialist market economy” (完善社会主义市场经济体制) as well as strengthening and innovating governance of society (加强和创新社会治理).[11] This indicates that the Chinese government views it both as an important means to regulate the economy and as a tool of governance to steer the behavior of citizens.


Among other things, the Social Credit System is meant to provide an answer to the problem of lack of trust on the Chinese market. Proponents argue that it will help eliminate problems such as food safety issues, cheating, and counterfeit goods.[13]

The Social Credit System will be limited to Mainland China and thus does not apply to Hong Kong and Macau.[citation needed] However, at present, plans do not distinguish between Chinese companies and foreign companies operating on the Chinese market, raising the possibility that foreign businesses operating in China will be subjected to the system as well

It is a solution to a major problem in a low-trust society.
This article talks about it more
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/05/24/chinese-citizens-want-the-government-to-rank-them/

To be Chinese today is to live in a society of distrust, where every opportunity is a potential con and every act of generosity a risk of exploitation.To be Chinese today is to live in a society of distrust, where every opportunity is a potential con and every act of generosity a risk of exploitation. When old people fall on the street, it’s common that no one offers to help them up, afraid that they might be accused of pushing them in the first place and sued. The problem has grown steadily since the start of the country’s economic boom in the 1980s. But only recently has the deficit of social trust started to threaten not just individual lives, but the country’s economy and system of politics as a whole. The less people trust each other, the more the social pact that the government has with its citizens — of social stability and harmony in exchange for a lack of political rights — disintegrates.

The Social Credit System can really turn up the peer pressure by making a person's score go lower if their friends and family score goes lower.
That will cause a person's friends and loved ones to pressure them to stop fasting and trim their beard instead of the government.

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-credit-score-privacy-invasion

Indeed, the government's Social Credit System is basically a big data gamified version of the Communist Party's surveillance methods; the disquieting dang'an. The regime kept a dossier on every individual that tracked political and personal transgressions. A citizen's dang'an followed them for life, from schools to jobs. People started reporting on friends and even family members, raising suspicion and lowering social trust in China. The same thing will happen with digital dossiers. People will have an incentive to say to their friends and family, "Don't post that. I don't want you to hurt your score but I also don't want you to hurt mine."

 

[Kaitzilla]

Punishing people for things like fasting or buying video games sounds ridiculous and probably are just hearsays.

The Social Credit System will be based in a large part on Sesame Credit, and Sesame Credit does ding people's score for playing video games 10 hours a day.

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-credit-score-privacy-invasion

So just how are people rated? Individuals on Sesame Credit are measured by a score ranging between 350 and 950 points. Alibaba does not divulge the "complex algorithm" it uses to calculate the number but they do reveal the five factors taken into account. The first is credit history. For example, does the citizen pay their electricity or phone bill on time? Next is fulfilment capacity, which it defines in its guidelines as "a user's ability to fulfil his/her contract obligations". The third factor is personal characteristics, verifying personal information such as someone's mobile phone number and address. But the fourth category, behaviour and preference, is where it gets interesting.

Under this system, something as innocuous as a person's shopping habits become a measure of character. Alibaba admits it judges people by the types of products they buy. "Someone who plays video games for ten hours a day, for example, would be considered an idle person," says Li Yingyun, Sesame's Technology Director. "Someone who frequently buys diapers would be considered as probably a parent, who on balance is more likely to have a sense of responsibility." So the system not only investigates behaviour - it shapes it. It "nudges" citizens away from purchases and behaviours the government does not like.

Friends matter, too. The fifth category is interpersonal relationships. What does their choice of online friends and their interactions say about the person being assessed? Sharing what Sesame Credit refers to as "positive energy" online, nice messages about the government or how well the country's economy is doing, will make your score go up.

Punished for fasting has also really happened.

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/china-punished-about-100-minority-uighurs-observing-ramadan-fast-1626527

Chinese authorities have reportedly punished at least 100 Uighur Muslims, an ethnic Turkish group, living in the Xinjiang province for observing Ramadan – the Muslim holy month of fasting.
...

... Raxit also said that government officials belonging to the minority community face extreme pressure during the month of Ramadan as they are forced to break their fast and are severely punished for defying the state ban.
"The authorities will send people to take [Uighur Muslims] out to lunch, for example," Raxit said. "In the countryside, the officials go into the fields and eat and work alongside the people there ... it's basically a political campaign [against religious practice].

 

[Narz]

Lol, I remember when ReindeerThistle was trying to convince me that China was freer than the US.

 

[Arwon]

Only dangerous individuals would ever want to own a gun or criticize the government who only wants to help its people.

Oh man, the gun take is adorable

 

[Verbose]

I'm not saying that the Chinese regime is not authoritarian, I'm saying that it is not all-powerful, and that the sorts of pettily draconian legislation indicated by the OP represent a dramatic over-reach. Even an elaborate system of incentivised snitching cannot ensure consistent or effective enforcement. Especially in a country with the sort of endemic corruption seen in China, it often just becomes another tool in the arsenal of bribe-seeking officials. Punishment is less likely to mean "I broke the law" than "I pissed off the wrong guy"

This would seem to assume this system is going to be enforced by humans. THAT is not a given anymore.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The funniest thing about this thread is that events in China are being portrayed as the downfall of liberty. I don't recall China ever being viewed as the bellwether of democracy. If they improve a bit, or slide back a bit, does that really make a big difference for this issue? At this particular moment in history, when what has supposedly been the "light of democracy to the world" seems to be reversing course and begging for authoritarian rule to supplant their institutions does a country as far down the ranks as China really merit a lot of hand wringing?