China's Social Credit System

[Cheetah]

China rates its own citizens - including online behaviour

The Chinese government is currently implementing a nationwide electronic system, called the Social Credit System, attributing to each of its 1,3 billion citizens a score for his or her behavior. The system will be based on various criteria, ranging from financial credibility and criminal record to social media behavior. From 2020 onwards each adult citizen should, besides his identity card, have such a credit code.

[...]

The far reaching scope of the system is confirmed by an explanation on the website of the scientific institute CASS (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences). As a result of its transformation in recent decades Chinese society has changed 'from a society of acquaintances into a society of strangers'. As a result moral conduct has suffered: 'When people's behavior isn't bound by their morality, a system must be used to restrict their actions'. Therefore it is time for the 'Social Credit System', which covers 'four major fields: politics, business, society and justice.'

According to professor Wang Shuqin, who is working on the new system, the mechanism for establishing financial creditworthiness, is practically ready to be put in practice. Without such a mechanism doing business in China is risky, she stresses, as about half of the signed contracts are not kept. 'Especially given the speed of the digital economy it is crucial that people can quickly verify each other's creditworthiness.' Adding non-financial factors to the system, like the 'socialist core values', she regards as a bonus: 'The behavior of the majority is determined by their world of thoughts. A person who believes in socialist core values, is behaving more decent.'

'This is the most staggering, publicly announced, scaled use of big data I've ever seen', says Michael Fertik, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author of The Reputation Economy. 'It certainly feels about as Orwellian as your nightmares would have it be. On the other hand, it is probably a fairly inevitable evolution - an updated, Big Data version - of the longstanding Communist Party's grading of China's citizens. It's exactly what any Command state would like to do with data.'

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This sounds terrifyingly scary to me. My biggest fears however, is that such a system can have a positive effect for the state, and even worse, I imagine that other politicians might want to adopt it.

 

[Leonel]

Sounds like a FICO score to me.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Well, there is this idea that the success of democracy rests on there being a well informed and responsible electorate. Perhaps some sort of rating system intended to ensure that such an electorate exists would not be a terrible thing.

 

[Kozmos]

Sounds like a variant of the voting weight system I had in mind. Their version has the advantage of using currently existing technology. Maybe. I'm wondering who or what will assign the values for social media behavior.

Anyway, unless democratic governments implement a similar system with it's own values intact it's going to be steamrolled.

 

[plarq]

Link

This sounds terrifyingly scary to me. My biggest fears however, is that such a system can have a positive effect for the state, and even worse, I imagine that other politicians might want to adopt it.

Very good idea, pending implementation. The No.1 trouble of Chinese government cracking down discontent is that brute force is expensive and cannot be applied to most of citizens. This would be a good idea, if you bad mouthing the government, your mortgage rate goes up!

 

[sophie]

We have arrived gentlemen.

 

[warpus]

"I'm sorry sir, according to our records you deposited a rather large poop right beside the Louvre, right in the middle the sidewalk. That cost you 200 points and puts you well below the threshold required to qualify for this card. I recommend you do some solid socialist deeds and get back to us in a year's time."

 

[Hygro]

Like we're not going to have one here except controlled by a few private companies and rated by our fellow people, i.e. internet culture-warriors who love taking sides on everything.

 

[FriendlyFire]

So from one extreme to the other.
Lets just say that China is so completely unregulated libertarian kleptocracy, that it is impossible to change social behaviour from bottom up given how corrupt the ruling class are and how many are fleeing with there money for the west.

 

[Bootstoots]

This is my favorite paragraph:

Chinese internet firms are definitely interested, as Ant Financial, a subsidiary of ecommercegiant Alibaba, recently showed. To its popular app Alipay it added a new service which rated a person's credit worthiness on a scale of 350 to 950 points. This score is not only determined by one's lending behavior, but also by hobbies and friends. If friends have a poor lending reputation, this reflects badly on the person, just as prolonged playing of video games. Buying diapers indicates responsibility and scores therefore well.

Here we have a credit score that also makes judgments about who you associate with and what you purchase. And it's a private initiative. I could easily imagine this catching on outside of China - anyone who wants to assess your "character" in some way (e.g. employers) without having met you would love it.

But apparently you can just buy a stockpile of diapers and then you become an upstanding citizen.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

This is my favorite paragraph:



Here we have a credit score that also makes judgments about who you associate with and what you purchase. And it's a private initiative. I could easily imagine this catching on outside of China - anyone who wants to assess your "character" in some way (e.g. employers) without having met you would love it.

But apparently you can just buy a stockpile of diapers and then you become an upstanding citizen.

Just because of the way that I think I'm picturing people buying diapers for social credit and then selling them at a loss to parents who are cash strapped. Sort of like spinning off carbon footprint, or money laundering.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

But apparently you can just buy a stockpile of diapers and then you become an upstanding citizen.

But if you buy too many diapers, wouldn't they be wondering how many illegal kids you have?

There have been times when I've stocked up on cat food or litter when it's on sale, and some clerk makes a comment that I "must have a lot of cats."

Two cats does not constitute "a lot."

 

[Bootstoots]

If it's just a rating system, you could get away with it for a while. But if any humans actually look into the details of your purchasing habits, they might raise a few questions.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Well, there is this idea that the success of democracy rests on there being a well informed and responsible electorate. Perhaps some sort of rating system intended to ensure that such an electorate exists would not be a terrible thing.

It's oe of those things that appeal to me ideologically and might be a good idea in theory, but it's so ripe for abuse that I don't want it implemented.

Here we have a credit score that also makes judgments about who you associate with and what you purchase. And it's a private initiative. I could easily imagine this catching on outside of China - anyone who wants to assess your "character" in some way (e.g. employers) without having met you would love it.

But apparently you can just buy a stockpile of diapers and then you become an upstanding citizen.

It could catch on in some countries. The EU would probably ban it, but I predict that it will be one of the more improtant steps in the USA's decline into a cyberpunk dystopia. There's a significant portion of the American populace that is fine with any kind of oppression and abuse, just as long as it's not "the government" that's doing it. Actually, given all the data that google and facebook are collecting and selling, I wouldn't be surprised to find out it's already happening informally.
"Oh, one of his facebook friends smokes pot ? Higher insurance fees for him."

 

[The_J]

This is was one of the occassions where the term "orwellian" is probably really justified.

 

[Darkflight]

This is was one of the occassions where the term "orwellian" is probably really justified.

Relevant:


Link to video.

 

[aelf]

@OP Didn't you use to live in a country where strict codes for behaviour are unofficially in place? I live in one. I don't imagine it would feel all that much different. And, to be fair, the people of the PRC can be a very badly-behaved lot.

What colour?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

If it's just a rating system, you could get away with it for a while. But if any humans actually look into the details of your purchasing habits, they might raise a few questions.

Or browsing history. Sometimes I get some really bizarre recommendations coming up on YouTube just because I watched something for the sake of participating in a thread here and it's not the kind of thing I normally watch.

 

[Cheetah]

@OP Didn't you use to live in a country where strict codes for behaviour are unofficially in place? I live in one. I don't imagine it would feel all that much different. And, to be fair, the people of the PRC can be a very badly-behaved lot.

You're thinking of Japan?

There's certainly expectations around behaviour (like in any country), and I suppose Japan is rather famous for being socially rigid. Personally, I never noticed any rigidity, but that might have been because I was (1) oblivious to it (I'm more street-dumb than street-smart), (2) obviously non-Japanese (so people assumed I simply didn't know any better), or (3) because I spent most of my time in Tokyo (assuming that big cities are less socially rigid). Or a good mix of all three.

And yes, I've noticed that Chinese people can be rather "uncivilized". But I'd rather see them being educated about what's expected of them, instead of being trained with carrots and whips.

Still, I find this particularly worrying, as it takes a great leap towards instituting thought crime. I didn't quote the whole article earlier, but:

[The system is] very ambitious in both depth and scope, including scrutinizing individual behavior and what books people read. [...]

[The Alipay] score is not only determined by one's lending behavior, but also by hobbies and friends. If friends have a poor lending reputation, this reflects badly on the person, just as prolonged playing of video games. Buying diapers indicates responsibility and scores therefore well. [...]

When people have to start worrying about not reading the wrong books, not writing the wrong things, not having the wrong friends, not having the wrong hobbies...

I'd probably have to block quite a few people on CFC to retain a good score, and severely change my posted political sympathies.

 

[aelf]

When people have to start worrying about not reading the wrong books, not writing the wrong things, not having the wrong friends, not having the wrong hobbies...

People in my country used to worry about stuff like that. After some time, they didn't anymore... They'd internalised the rules.