China Implementing Dystopian Plan to Rate People Based on Social Behavior
“will be used to reward or punish people and organisations for “trustworthiness” across a range of measures”
China is planning an authoritarian system which will essentially reward people for good behavior and punish others with difficulty based on a points system. And if you think this sounds like something that will happen in the distant future, guess again. Beijing is planning to begin implementation in 2020.
Claire Che, David Ramli, and Dandan Li report at Bloomberg News:
Beijing to Judge Every Resident Based on Behavior by End of 2020
China’s plan to judge each of its 1.3 billion people based on their social behavior is moving a step closer to reality, with Beijing set to adopt a lifelong points program by 2021 that assigns personalized ratings for each resident.
The capital city will pool data from several departments to reward and punish some 22 million citizens based on their actions and reputations by the end of 2020, according to a plan posted on the Beijing municipal government’s website on Monday. Those with better so-called social credit will get “green channel” benefits while those who violate laws will find life more difficult.
The Beijing project will improve blacklist systems so that those deemed untrustworthy will be “unable to move even a single step,” according to the government’s plan. Xinhua reported on the proposal Tuesday, while the report posted on the municipal government’s website is dated July 18.
China has long experimented with systems that grade its citizens, rewarding good behavior with streamlined services while punishing bad actions with restrictions and penalties. Critics say such moves are fraught with risks and could lead to systems that reduce humans to little more than a report card.
Hat tip to Nicholas A. Christakis of Yale:
So dystopian and authoritarian as to defy belief: China will judge each of its 1.3 billion people based on their social behavior & adopt a lifelong points program that assigns personalized ratings by 2021. Via @business @clayroutledge https://t.co/GwArUtwOk0
— Nicholas A. Christakis (@NAChristakis) November 23, 2018
Harry Cockburn of The Independent UK reports that the plan is already having real world implications:
China blacklists millions of people from booking flights as ‘social credit’ system introduced
Millions of Chinese nationals have been blocked from booking flights or trains as Beijing seeks to implement its controversial “social credit” system, which allows the government to closely monitor and judge each of its 1.3 billion citizens based on their behaviour and activity.
The system, to be rolled out by 2020, aims to make it “difficult to move” for those deemed “untrustworthy”, according to a detailed plan published by the government this week.
It will be used to reward or punish people and organisations for “trustworthiness” across a range of measures.
A key part of the plan not only involves blacklisting people with low social credibility scores, but also “publicly disclosing the records of enterprises and individuals’ untrustworthiness on a regular basis”.
Some people may point to the credit scoring system in America for comparison but they are not the same thing:
Punishments are not clearly detailed in the government plan, but beyond making travel difficult, are also believed to include slowing internet speeds, reducing access to good schools for individuals or their children, banning people from certain jobs, preventing booking at certain hotels and losing the right to own pets.
Patrick Farrell and Patrick Tyrrell of The National Interest have more:
Big Brother Is Here: Why China’s ‘Social Credit’ Monitoring Tool Should Terrify You
For people living in China, government repression is a fact of life.
The country earned a rating of “mostly unfree” in the latest Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom and is judged politically “not free” by Freedom House.
Unfortunately, the situation may soon become worse…
The system would rate the “trustworthiness” of Chinese citizens according to a wide variety of factors, such as what they buy, how they spend their time, and who their friends are, just to name a few.
The government would then take those deemed untrustworthy and punish them by not letting their children attend prestigious private schools, not allowing them to travel, and shutting down their internet presence…
However, one must ask what it means to be “untrustworthy.”
In the case of journalist Liu Hu, it could mean trying to expose government corruption. Other offenses could be things such as jaywalking, smoking on a train, criticizing the government, or having friends or family that speak ill of the government, all things that can lower one’s score.
How long will it take for someone in American politics to propose something similar here?
You just know someone will eventually do it.
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Comments
Boycott China. Its government is the last, best hope for twentieth century totalitarianism; this social credit system seems to be the thing of which people like Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao could only dream.
We Americans should also fight tooth and nail against any attempt to impose such a system on our own country.
“We Americans should also fight tooth and nail against any attempt to impose such a system on our own country.”
Too late. It’s already here. Facebook, Twitter etc.
It’s more than just Facebook, this is a ‘roll out’ of a system that keeps track of everyone in all of their interactions in society. Hardcore 1984 and an early manifestation of absolute control through leading to total Globalism. What good is control of all forms of manufacture if you cannot also control the slaves that do the manufacturing. Also good for weeding out the non-producers and the social destroyers of “harmony”. Happy slaves are productive slaves.
Just like social media here in the USA.
Or, that sword of Damocoles that hangs over the head of every young person: the cumullative record.
Your change of view from 30yrs. ago is only valid contingent upon your political standing.
Facebook and Google are only to happy to help. On the other hand helping the United States Defense Department is against Google’s core values.
This is how China’s culture has historically kneecapped itself again and again. They systematically stifle the very individual initiative that produces innovation. By punishing those who dare to be think different, all they accomplish is to ensure that citizens who willingly submit to this will be uniformly poor.
It also incentivizes and empowers the underground economy which invites never-ending “cracking down” on counter revolutionaries or “enemies of the people” the classic “Chinese finger trap” flaw of dictatorships everywhere. It is no coincidence that our own underground economy has blossomed proportionately to the rate of growth in oppressive government regulation.
Other than entrenching political power in the status quo, it’s hard to feature any social benefit.
Call Facebook, Google and Twitter by who they are:
Mark Zuckerberg
Sheryl Sandberg
Larry Page
Sergey Brin
Eric Schmidt
Jack Dorsey
Democrats here are jealous.
At best they can try to de-platform you from social media, sometimes get you fired with online mob targeting, in some states keep you from buying a gun based on a neighbor’s snitching on you, and occasionally target your business with government extortion by keeping banks from doing business with you. A comprehensive top-down plan vs. state-by-state partially successful targeting?
Wannabe totalitarian’s dream.
By the way, the China situation is very scary. More than 1 billion people actively coerced to do exactly what the government wants. History tells us where such power ends.
They can’t
Credit ratings, FICO scores, do the same. Employers have begun using these ratings in assessing would-be employees. What China is doing takes the concept to the nth degree.
China’s helpmates – Apple, IBM, Google, Oracle, the entire Bay Area of companies, and a lot more.
Of all places, California is leading the prohibition of the use of criminal records by employers:
https://www.shouselaw.com/consequences-felony-california.html#1.1
Ergo Big Tech, Google, Facebook, etc. full cooperation with the Dictatorship.
Big Tech does LOVE them some Big Dictator.
Ergo Big Tech, Google, Facebook, etc. full cooperation with the Dictatorship.
Big Tech does LOVE them some Big Dictator.
So basically, it’s Twitter management scaled up to 1 billion.
@Pasedena.
But it works pretty well for them. It may squash some talented individuals, but they have 1.3 billion people, they don’t value each individual all that much and they don’t need to. They have far a higher level of patriotism/nationalism/unity than we do, so far it’s been enough to more than outweigh the restrictive aspects of the central government.
I’d like to say we’re 10 miles ahead and opening up the lead, that’s just not the truth.
Add to the mix the elimination of privately owned vehicles, replaced by “self-driving” cars. Stir in negative interest rates and a cashless economy. Top it all off with Rep. Swalwell heading the new committee for sensible gun laws, and Voila, we are at the end of the road to serfdom.
In NY, democrats have introduced Senate Bill 9191 which requires anyone wishing to purchase a firearm, obtain or renew a carry permit to submit to having their social media accounts reviewed over a three year period and their internet search history over a year. I don’t think this particular bill is going anywhere but this is NY… and anything could happen.
At a company, we had a joke that a person could “earn as many attaboys as possible, but one ‘aw-sh*t’ would wipe them all out!” I wonder whether the Chinese system will be similarly based or if there be more of a scaled-based system.
With the ever-increasing push of technology into our lives, no doubt there will an effort for a formalized system in this country. And, yes, it will be at the peril for further degrading humankind. Lord, help us.
In China the ‘aw-sh*t’ moment is punctuated with a pistol shot coming from behind your left ear.
We’re gonna punish our enemies, and we’re gonna reward our friends. — Barack Obama, October 2010
BUT, sadly Obama has not friends. Only serfs. Who could be as great as he finds himself to be? NONE
China had one-child, we have selective-child.
We have political congruence, China has their behavioral protocols.
Everyone has their faith and religion, respectively.
Sounds like the Chinese took a page from the Democrat playbook and developed it to it’s logical end. This is what they try to do through social pressure and mob violence to silence the Right in America.
i have my social credit score: “Deplorable”
and i’m damn proud of it too! 😎
Gun control legislation being proposed in New York could require anyone hoping to buy a firearm to disclose their social media and internet search history, according to a report.
The bill, drafted by state Sen. Kevin Parker and Brooklyn borough President Eric Adams, both Democrats, would allow officials to review up to three years’ worth of social media and internet search history before a gun license is approved and renewed, ABC Action News reported this week.
The article goes on to state the following:
In addition, the Senate bill would give authorities permission to look for “profane slurs used or biased language used to describe race, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion, disability or sexual orientation; threatening health or safety of another person, or an act of terrorism,” according to ABC News-affiliate WHAM.
New Yorkers may need to submit social media, internet search histories for gun licenses https://t.co/5e9XXjfR29
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) November 24, 2018
Critics say such moves are fraught with risks and could lead to systems that reduce humans to little more than a report card.
Worse—a government report card.
Imagine the Post Office running such a system. Evaluations might be based on things of great moment to the Post Office, but irrelevant to anyone else. Get too much mail? Too little? Mail too many heavy packages? Ever stick the stamps on upside down or sideways? Grouse too much about your mailbox filled with junk you just have to throw out immediately? House number doesn’t conform to USPS standards? Send too many Christmas cards and not enough “Happy Holidays” cards? An energetic bureaucrat could come up with some real dillies.
The sci-fi comedy The Orville did an episode on this very subject.
Can’t be true, comrade Zach tells us China is “opening up”…
He meant “metastasizing”.