China Announces New Social Credit Law (technologyreview.com) 172
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a MIT Technology Review article, written by Zeyi Yang: It's easier to talk about what China's social credit system isn't than what it is. Ever since 2014, when China announced a six-year plan to build a system to reward actions that build trust in society and penalize the opposite, it has been one of the most misunderstood things about China in Western discourse. Now, with new documents released in mid-November, there's an opportunity to correct the record. For most people outside China, the words "social credit system" conjure up an instant image: a Black Mirror -- esque web of technologies that automatically score all Chinese citizens according to what they did right and wrong. But the reality is, that terrifying system doesn't exist, and the central government doesn't seem to have much appetite to build it, either. Instead, the system that the central government has been slowly working on is a mix of attempts to regulate the financial credit industry, enable government agencies to share data with each other, and promote state-sanctioned moral values -- however vague that last goal in particular sounds. There's no evidence yet that this system has been abused for widespread social control (though it remains possible that it could be wielded to restrict individual rights).
While local governments have been much more ambitious with their innovative regulations, causing more controversies and public pushback, the countrywide social credit system will still take a long time to materialize. And China is now closer than ever to defining what that system will look like. On November 14, several top government agencies collectively released a draft law on the Establishment of the Social Credit System, the first attempt to systematically codify past experiments on social credit and, theoretically, guide future implementation. Yet the draft law still left observers with more questions than answers. [...]
"This draft doesn't reflect a major sea change at all," says Jeremy Daum, a senior fellow of the Yale Law School Paul Tsai China Center who has been tracking China's social credit experiment for years. It's not a meaningful shift in strategy or objective, he says. Rather, the law stays close to local rules that Chinese cities like Shanghai have released and enforced in recent years on things like data collection and punishment methods -- just giving them a stamp of central approval. It also doesn't answer lingering questions that scholars have about the limitations of local rules. "This is largely incorporating what has been out there, to the point where it doesn't really add a whole lot of value," Daum adds. So what is China's current system actually like? Do people really have social credit scores? Is there any truth to the image of artificial-intelligence-powered social control that dominates Western imagination? The "social credit" term covers two different things, writes Yang: "traditional financial creditworthiness and 'social creditworthiness,' which draws data from a larger variety of sectors." The former is a concept Westerners are familiar with as it essentially refers to documenting individuals' or businesses' financial history and predicting their ability to pay back future loans. The latter, which is what's most controversial in the West, is the Chinese government's attempt to hold entities accountable to fight corruption, telecom scams, tax evasion, academic plagiarism, and much more.
"The government seems to believe that all these problems are loosely tied to a lack of trust, and that building trust requires a one-size-fits-all solution," writes Yang. "So just as financial credit scoring helps assess a person's creditworthiness, it thinks, some form of 'social credit' can help people assess others' trustworthiness in other respects." It gets confusing though because the "social" credit scoring often gets lumped together with financial credit scoring in policy discussions, "even though it's a much younger field with little precedent in other societies." Local governments also occasionally mix up the two, further complicating the matter.
Has the government built a system that is actively regulating these two types of credit? How will a social credit system affect Chinese people's everyday lives? So is there a centralized social credit score computed for every Chinese citizen? These are some of the questions Yang attempts to answer in the full article.
While local governments have been much more ambitious with their innovative regulations, causing more controversies and public pushback, the countrywide social credit system will still take a long time to materialize. And China is now closer than ever to defining what that system will look like. On November 14, several top government agencies collectively released a draft law on the Establishment of the Social Credit System, the first attempt to systematically codify past experiments on social credit and, theoretically, guide future implementation. Yet the draft law still left observers with more questions than answers. [...]
"This draft doesn't reflect a major sea change at all," says Jeremy Daum, a senior fellow of the Yale Law School Paul Tsai China Center who has been tracking China's social credit experiment for years. It's not a meaningful shift in strategy or objective, he says. Rather, the law stays close to local rules that Chinese cities like Shanghai have released and enforced in recent years on things like data collection and punishment methods -- just giving them a stamp of central approval. It also doesn't answer lingering questions that scholars have about the limitations of local rules. "This is largely incorporating what has been out there, to the point where it doesn't really add a whole lot of value," Daum adds. So what is China's current system actually like? Do people really have social credit scores? Is there any truth to the image of artificial-intelligence-powered social control that dominates Western imagination? The "social credit" term covers two different things, writes Yang: "traditional financial creditworthiness and 'social creditworthiness,' which draws data from a larger variety of sectors." The former is a concept Westerners are familiar with as it essentially refers to documenting individuals' or businesses' financial history and predicting their ability to pay back future loans. The latter, which is what's most controversial in the West, is the Chinese government's attempt to hold entities accountable to fight corruption, telecom scams, tax evasion, academic plagiarism, and much more.
"The government seems to believe that all these problems are loosely tied to a lack of trust, and that building trust requires a one-size-fits-all solution," writes Yang. "So just as financial credit scoring helps assess a person's creditworthiness, it thinks, some form of 'social credit' can help people assess others' trustworthiness in other respects." It gets confusing though because the "social" credit scoring often gets lumped together with financial credit scoring in policy discussions, "even though it's a much younger field with little precedent in other societies." Local governments also occasionally mix up the two, further complicating the matter.
Has the government built a system that is actively regulating these two types of credit? How will a social credit system affect Chinese people's everyday lives? So is there a centralized social credit score computed for every Chinese citizen? These are some of the questions Yang attempts to answer in the full article.
Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
China would never permit an article like Yang's to be published anywhere in their country, and certainly not attached to the name of one of their leading universities. They must be laughing at how we continually publish and debate their propaganda as if it has merit on its face; even debate itself promulgates their bullshit.
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well, even that rarity only possible in the proverbial land of freedom just states:
There's no evidence yet that this system has been abused for widespread social control (though it remains possible that it could be wielded to restrict individual rights).
yeah, well, i'm far from being an expert in this, and i'm as passionate an advocate of civil rights as anyone but ... "restricting individual rights"? that's not just a possibility. the fully democratic european country where i live does that on a regular basis, and the us does this routinely on a massive scale. so what the fuck are you even talking about?
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Did you really just go whole hog anti-Western whatsboutism to defend the CCP's absolutely evil dictatorship and try to compare the two systems as equally bad?
Spend your 50 cents wisely.
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his power doesn't come from his "presidency", but from being head of the party and the military. both these posts never had any time/reelection limits. the presidency did have such limits and "he" indeed got them removed, but is a ceremonial office that doesn't really give him any extra power. it's just political.
so, yeah, china is a "one party dictatorship" but he still will have to maintain/renew the support of the party and the army (so actually the elite) to continue to be the de-facto leader of china,
Dimensional reduction (Score:2)
You're obviously feeding some kind of troll, but I wish I had seen the story when it was fresh rather than just before it is falling off the top page. My only question about the FP would be directed to the moderators: "Why?"
As things stand now, we "Westerners" tend to reduce people to one dimension of money. I'm not sure what dimension the Chinese are trying to define. I don't speak Chinese and I don't trust translators. But I am sure that people are multidimensional and that any attempt to reduce people to
Re: Irony (Score:3)
Or, if you're someone like Steven Donziger you get thrown in jail by a corrupt judge.
Or if you're Fred Hampton, murdered in your sleep. Or, MLK, JFK, Malcolm X, assassinated in broad daylight. Or if you're Gary Webb y
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While I agree with you on much of this and think it is reprehensible.....do keep in mind, this is a very relatively new thing.
As short as 10-15 years ago, this sort of thing just didn't happen.
Sure, if you made publ
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Not really, for example this article was written and published under CCP rule: https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle... [scmp.com]
Seems pretty critical of the Social Credit System to me.
While China is obviously not as free and open as many other places, it's not like North Korea either. The censorship that exists is much more "passive", like blocking certain search results rather than sending the cops round if you type "Tiananmen Square massacre" into Baidu.
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Why am I not surprised you're here to defend an evil dictatorship as "not so bad because North Korea is so much worse!"?
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Because you want to be ignorant, and consider anyone trying to explain the situation so that we can better deal with it to be an enemy of your deliberately deficient intellect.
I want things to get better in China, but to do that means understanding it. As long as you keep yourself from understanding what China is actually like, you are no help at all. In fact you are just making things worse. You have to know your enemy to defeat them.
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China would never permit an article like Yang's to be published anywhere in their country, and certainly not attached to the name of one of their leading universities. ...
Except that your claim is not even true, this is search of social credit abuse [toutiao.com] in Toutiao the leading online news aggregator run by TikTok parent ByteDance. Let me translate the titles of some of these articles and their publishers/writers:
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How do those disprove my point? I said that China would never allow a Westerner to publish propaganda in China, and especially not attached to a reputable institution.
Yang is a foreign national pushing Chinese propaganda about a social credit system in the US. Hell, China doesn't even allow its youngsters to use TikTok for more than 50 minutes a day or whatever, and even then they have to be recommended educational videos. They make the uncensored, fucked up version available to our children all day long.
No thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
The last thing I want is the government enforcing it's "values" through leveraging of my financials.
That should really be terrifying to everyone, of all political stripes.
Re:No thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that what credit card companies are doing by a second degree of separation? Yes, I know that it's not the same thing, but the most recent example that comes to mind is Pixiv deciding to remove certain types of content [pixiv.net] because card processors didn't like it. This might be an apples to oranges comparison but it's still a bunch of companies leveraging people's finances to enforce their values.
That and the 2500$ paypal fine for "wrong think" mean that we're not THAT far from the chinese ideal. Except that the enforcement isn't governmental, but private financial entities get to do it instead.
Pick your poison.
Re:No thanks (Score:4, Insightful)
Apples and oranges are both fruit, but you're calling them identical. Slavery and enforcing laws are both forms of control, but they're not the same thing either. The US banks can refuse to service a business that peddles in hate speech. That's a natural consequence of being a pile of shit. There's a billion miles between that and impoverishing somebody because they say that Xi looks like Winnie the Pooh.
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most controversial in the West, is the Chinese government's attempt to hold entities accountable to fight corruption, telecom scams, tax evasion, academic plagiarism, and much more.
They want to hold people responsible for these obviously antisocial actions, but don't mention if other, more subtle "unapproved" actions, will also affect some sort of social score. Caught on camera jay-walking? Lose a point. Seen in the crowd at a protest site? Lose a point. Caught reading Western news sites? Lose a point. We really can't see into the system yet.
I guess the real question is what are the impacts of having a low social score? Loss of rights and privileges? Slower promotions? Demot
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The US banks can refuse to service a business that peddles in hate speech. That's a natural consequence of being a pile of shit.
US Banks should worry about money and laws, not the ethics and morals of the people they service. They are not supposed to be a secondary control. The government is supposed to do the controlling through written laws that are debated honestly before being passed.
By handing the banks that kind of control, you erode faith in the rule of law itself since the banks can arbitrarily decide what can happen rather than the law.
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The governor of NY tried to pressure banks into abandoning gun manufacturers by threatening them with the loss of government work. They cannot do that directly, legally, so they said "Banks, be careful! Dealing with gun companies makes you suffer reputational risk, which we consider!"
Except even that is illegal.
But it's the thought that counts.
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The real rub is that there's nothing preventing governments from judging you by your credit score. And it does have REAL consequences, for example if you have a low credit score you will have trouble finding a rental. If it slips far enough you basically can't get anywhere to live. All of the rental companies use them now. So if you have financial troubles, your chance of becoming homeless skyrocket as a result of the credit reporting system. It's frankly evil through and through. They won't even give me my
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Too late I'm afraid.
In the UK we have a system of criminal convictions that are considered "spent" after some time, at which point they don't need to be reported. For example, speeding convictions are spent after 5 years and don't have to be reported to insurance companies, who jack up your premium if you tell them about it.
We also have the "hostile environment" that was designed to make it difficult for illegal immigrants to access services. Not just government services, for example they can't get a bank a
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The last thing I want is the government enforcing it's "values" through leveraging of my financials.
That should really be terrifying to everyone, of all political stripes.
Reminds me of Canada freezing bank accounts of protesters.
Can't have people we don't like being able to buy bread, or say, spend their money on a book by Voltaire.
You't think 260 years would have been enough time for people to wake up to this stuff.
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Possible? This is China. It is a certainty.
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You confabulate instances of corruption in the US with systematic, purposeful, and sanctioned corruption in China.
The west already has a social credit score! (Score:2, Insightful)
The west already has a social credit score! It's called the CRIMINAL RECORD.
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and you need an trail by jury to get one
Re:The west already has a social credit score! (Score:5, Insightful)
Which isn't even true. The majority of criminal cases don't even go to trial and are simply by plead bargains.
Re:The west already has a social credit score! (Score:4, Informative)
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In most countries criminal trials do need to go to a serious hearing, usually a jury.
The USA is different with its plea bargaining. "Plead guilty for one year or risk a life if you go to court, and you will need $500K to pay your lawyers to have any chance."
Re:The west already has a social credit score! (Score:5, Informative)
Not really. It's a nice thought, but especially in the "war on drugs", jury trials are rare for the average schmoe pulled over in a traffic stop.
Re:The west already has a social credit score! (Score:5, Insightful)
For centuries, many parts of the West had a different social credit score called "What's your melanin level?" Some places likely still operate this system.
Fun fact (Score:5, Interesting)
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If you're at a party and someone asks you what you do for a living it's so they can decide how much respect they need to show you.
I always just tell them that I'm President of the United States.
Unfortunately, that typically means they show me no respect at all...
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Well played, though the joke I was looking for would have been some variation of "There Ain't No Such Thing as a Benevolent Dictator." There are only completely or partially malevolent dictators. Maybe with a Twitter joke about #ElongMusk mixed in?
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That's usually either women or their parents deciding how suitable you are as mating material.
Re:Fun fact (Score:4, Insightful)
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They are both classist societies. The difference is that in America, you can move up the class ladder more easily. In fact, doing so is likely to earn you more respect than that accorded to someone who was born into the class in question.
There is a reason why the UK is where the old "But if you fuck just ONE SHEEP..." joke came from.
Re:Fun fact (Score:4, Insightful)
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Thing is, according to Visual Capitalist, in 2020 the UK ranking on social mobility was in position 21 at 74.4, but the USA was at #27 with 70.4 https://www.visualcapitalist.c... [visualcapitalist.com] So on average, it's easier to achieve the 'American Dream' in the UK than in the USA.
I can attest to this.
I was born with an atrophied eye muscle, basically I couldn't see straight born to a single unemployed mother.
In the US I'd be either blind or dead (probably the first, then the other).
As I was fortunate enough to be born in Australia, I received a special apparatus (a swing) to prevent me from regurgitating everything and saw one of the top paedo-optical surgeons in the southern hemisphere, three times.
I'm now one of the top 10% of wage earners in the UK. Yes, the UK, I
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If you're at a party and someone asks you what you do for a living
I could tell you. But then I'd have to kill you.
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Re: Fun fact (Score:2)
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Wow. First you want to know details of the class system, and then you proceed to dismiss all liberal thinking Americans as unworthy to be Americans, and demonstrate a total lack of understanding of the left's values.
You literally just answered your own request.
Not just the West. (Score:5, Informative)
Racial and ethnic bigotry exists everywhere in the world though the local flavour varies. People don't like or trust anyone who is different, and if it is easy to identify a group of what we hate by their skin colour, physical features, accent, or culture, then so much the better.
Our community is all the richer because of people immigrating after escaping cleansing activities in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. And, of course, there is always some prejudice to greet them when they get here.
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Only mention of "trust" beyond the summary (and my comment). Not a bad comment, but "informative"? Seems light on that side.
But did you know about the default trust thing? Most people automatically give a default "trust" setting to people they classify as belonging to their own group, whereas they give a default "don't trust" setting to people they classify as not belonging to their own group. (But I'd have to root around for a while to find the source book... And root deeper to find the original research.)
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Default trust to kin is part of the same equation. A valid area of study but we don't need research to tell us what life readily teaches us. The distrust/trust is coded into popular catch phrases and not necessarily just racist bullshit.
er, and one person's "informative'' is another person's "flame bait'. I wouldn't take the details of moderation too seriously
I would be interested in the source if you have any details.
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Meanwhile, in China: https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
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For centuries, many parts of the West had a different social credit score called "What's your melanin level?" Some places likely still operate this system.
While the West have largely moved on from this, many parts of the world still have this system in place.
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A and ends with another A above the country that starts with M and below the country that starts with a C
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No, it's called your FICO Score. Having a low rating can be even worse than a criminal record.
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Eh, yes and no. In the short term maybe, but in the long term ( or even medium term, depending on what's wrong with your credit ) you can dramatically improve your score.
Your criminal record never goes away.
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Your criminal record never goes away.
That just isn't true. It is true for murder, not for lesser crimes. Each state has a different way they handle this and the federal government also has its own unique policy with regard to which crimes last for how long. But other than a few specific instances (fraud for instance tends to last longer than you might think) crimes are often off someone's record 7 years after the sentence is served (including whatever probation period there is). Often governments don't completely destroy records on time wh
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Re:The west already has a social credit score! (Score:4, Insightful)
The west already has a social credit score! It's called the CRIMINAL RECORD.
Because it's only the West where people want to know if someone is a murderer or rapist, sure.
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Or a drug user, or a victim of the "War on Drugs" that incentivizes police to make as many arrests as possible. After all, they can confiscate the vehicle, sell it, and make 100% profit off the auction. Roadside drug test kits are incredibly unreliable, but by the time you've gotten a real lab to test the sample, you've already been in jail long enough you'll probably make a plea deal to get out-- and you're now a junkie for life.
How about a police department that entered into a deal with a breathalyzer c
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Uh... hmmm.. I can't think of a way to avoid a drug arrest... maybe don't buy, use, or possess? Nah, no way that would help 99.999% of drug convicted people.
https://www.tcpalm.com/story/news/crime/martin-county/2021/12/02/faking-drug-busts-lands-former-martin-county-deputy-state-prison/8640047002/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/body-cam-video-baltimore-police-department-officer-planted-drugs/
https://www.wfla.com/news/florida/second-florida-officer-charged-with-planting-drugs/
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-florida-cop-drug-planting-sentence-20210713-sqxumepu4jca3mhhuo2ij2k424-story.html
Do you have a url for a police department colluding with a breathalyzer company or you just make that shit up?
Turns out, a little of both. It had been some time since I'd watc
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Or a driving record, where the person with the most points loses.
I was on a flight recently and the person in front of me reclined their seat without warning while I was eating, almost knocking my drink over. Also the person would randomly bounce back in their seat, it was annoying. So I wish airlines had social credit scores for their passengers beyond simply banning the most unruly ones.
"promote state-sanctioned moral values" (Score:4, Insightful)
promote state-sanctioned moral values [...] There's no evidence yet that this system has been abused for widespread social control (though it remains possible that it could be wielded to restrict individual rights
If a stated goal is to "promote state-sanctioned moral values" using social credit scores, then even threat of carrot and stick use of the scores *is* abuse for widespread social control. The program's mere existence is abuse of the citizenry.
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promote state-sanctioned moral values [...] There's no evidence yet that this system has been abused for widespread social control (though it remains possible that it could be wielded to restrict individual rights
If a stated goal is to "promote state-sanctioned moral values" using social credit scores, then even threat of carrot and stick use of the scores *is* abuse for widespread social control. The program's mere existence is abuse of the citizenry.
Erm... that's the point.
China, as predicted 20 years ago, has a rising middle class. The Chinese system of governance is designed to control a nation comprised almost entirely of peasants. The problem with the middle class is that they start to demand things, luxuries, better working conditions, a say in their own governance. The last one is of a particular problem to the Chinese government which is decidedly autocratic. So they devised a means to destroy middle class people who step out of line, it's ca
The big flaw (Score:5, Insightful)
The big flaw in such a system is that financial credit worthiness is quantifiable. You have assets and liabilities (how much you have and how much you owe). You also can quantify earning potential based on salary. Anything related to a "social credit" is purely subjective. What one person thinks is acceptable behavior is totally unacceptable to another person. Furthermore, any proposed social "standard" can and will change over time. That means that you may have high social credit today, in this region, according to this group of people but five years from now, the behavior that had "value" is now a detriment. If you want to talk about fiat currency, this concept makes inflation look like a walk in the park.
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Could a criminal record be quantified as a risk of causing harm to an employer?
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Could a criminal record be quantified as a risk of causing harm to an employer?
Why would that be a concern? We wreck people's careers every day in the West for wrong-think and no one bats an eye.
So the Chinese are going to formalize the process. Except there homosexuals will get the short end of the stick, heterosexuality being among the important "values" of the Chinese.
Gamify all the things.
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The big flaw in such a system is that financial credit worthiness is quantifiable. Anything related to a "social credit" is purely subjective. What one person thinks is acceptable behavior is totally unacceptable to another person. Furthermore, any proposed social "standard" can and will change over time.
I don't think your post is consistent.
The way "financial credit worthiness" works is you define an endpoint (e.g. likelihood to repay loan), you look at past datapoints to see how that endpoint was correlated with a wide swathe of input variables, and you embody that correlation in an algorithm or model. From that, you predict future likelihood to repay loan based on input variables.
Likewise "social credit worthiness" is you define an endpoint (e.g. likelihood to be arrested), you look at past datapoints, y
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A similar serious issue with financial credit scores, though, is that they are in fact quite opaque.
Both systems need to have transparency into the way the score is derived in order to be of any use whatsoever.
Oh, and avoiding having the system controlled by an autocratic ruler is usually a good thing, too.
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> The big flaw in such a system is that financial credit worthiness is quantifiable.
Not in the UK, and probably not anywhere else either. In the UK, your credit score goes down if you apply for multiple credit cards - even if you subsequently don't actually go through with the application, or else return them immediately. The thinking being that "something must be wrong", rather than "hmm... maybe they were just shopping around to see what offers they get, because the financial industry are a bunch of cr
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A.A. Milne has a pretty rotten social credit score, I hear.
Interesting, but scary (Score:5, Interesting)
The basic concept of a "social credit score" is fairly appealing.
You lose points for missing a doctors appointment, or being late to school.
You earn points for helping with a street clean-up, or donating to charity.
And presumably you get bonuses for a high positive score, like free swimming pool entry, or tickets to a sports event.
It all sounds ok until you think about who is in control. And that is the issue.
It basically enforces the morals of the people controlling the system - or the morals they want, which might not be the same.
China is notably very touchy about criticism, whereas most western democracies ignore minor slights. So from the point of view of a western democratic citizen (which includes me, despite Australia not being notably west of much) this is potentially very oppressive.
With a light hand, and sensible rules, it would work well.
But who will control the controllers?
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The basic concept of a "social credit score" is fairly appealing
you forgot to add:
”As long as the ones in power applying the social credit score have morals and virtues that align with mine.”
The *problem* is, You have little to no control over the values and morals of the people in power, and as soon as the ones in power deviate from *your* selected morals and virtues, you find your ability to protest that change hamstrung by the very system you previously admired.
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The basic concept of a "social credit score" is fairly appealing.
But who will control the controllers?
Yeah, I don't think it's fairly appealing at all.
Bureaucratic establishments aren't typically known for taking context into account when logging and reporting anything.
The why you miss an appointment can be as important as the appointment itself. Bureaucracy isn't known for caring about that, at all.
Could mom be a drunk or dad just selfish and irresponsible? Oh cool, the child will be punished for 'being late' in addition to lousy parents.
It's all very akin to the compounding and punitive punishmen
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The basic concept of a "social credit score" is fairly appealing.
You lose points for missing a doctors appointment, or being late to school.
You earn points for helping with a street clean-up, or donating to charity.
And presumably you get bonuses for a high positive score, like free swimming pool entry, or tickets to a sports event.
It all sounds ok until you think about who is in control. And that is the issue.
No. Fuck no.
Look, the problem with this isn't even a matter of who runs it, it's the scope. Inside a classroom, a school, a household etc., or even in your doctors office, that's like a closed loop, or local. Gamify the the heck out of making appointments on time, doing chores, whatever, half off your next flu shot, you get a gold star, a cookie, that's FINE.
What you described is global, open loop, whatever you want to call it. Where you put something in over here and it comes out over there. It's ripe
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If this ever comes to pass, I would then just say that people can go fuck themselves, eat a bag of dicks, stay the fuck out of my life, and go fuck themselves. There won't be any dirty rotten trick I won't pull and society will be my shitpot and punching bag.
Does society really want to play this game? Because I'm ready.
Real political power (Score:2)
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It basically enforces the morals of the people controlling the system - or the morals they want, which might not be the same.
I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning. *sniff* *sniff*
I also love being held to a higher standard than people hold themselves to.
Slashdot bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
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Picture (Score:3)
George Orwell, 1984
“Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”
George Orwell, 1984
Propaganda Piece (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder how much the CCP had to pay for this.
There’s no evidence yet that this system has been abused for widespread social control (though it remains possible that it could be wielded to restrict individual rights).
First signs of abuse
https://www.scmp.com/abacus/ne... [scmp.com]
Hey they even throttle your internet
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
Even without the life threatening aspects who needs the annoying relative aspects of this?
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Can you imagine
Yes.
I can't help but notice a resemblance... (Score:2)
The Orville, Season 1, episode 7. "Majority Rule"
Or am I misreading the situation entirely?
It's a sharp contrast (Score:5, Informative)
For me, the take-away's are:
... that terrifying system doesn't exist, and the central government doesn't seem to have much appetite to build it, either.
While local governments have been much more ambitious with their innovative regulations, causing more controversies and public pushback,
There's no evidence yet that this system has been abused for widespread social control (though it remains possible that it could be wielded to restrict individual rights)
So... It could be horrible. It has room to be horrible. The local governments have had a history of being horrible. But there's no signs it's horrible country wide because they don't feel like building it?
It's easier to talk about what China's social credit system ... has been one of the most misunderstood things about China in Western discourse.
Right... so not the Xinjiang Uighur genocide, which China claims isn't happening. Nor the country disappearing the next religious figure (Dalai Lama) and determining their own, which they say is misunderstood. Nor the falung gong crackdown which they claim it's for their own good but also they're suicidal and criminals. Nor the fact they keep breaking economic promises, which they claims isn't the case. Nor putting countries into a debt trap due to belt and road initiative which they claim is a misunderstanding. Nor the tiananmen massacre that they claim didn't happen. Nor the reported massive increase amounts of exhaust and pollutants given off during the start of the covid pandemic around crematories, which they claim isn't them cremating bodies by a large numbers. Nor that Winnie the Pooh was caught on tape calling Justin Trudeau "Too Naive" when he was trying to talk about establish peaceful economic talks.
No, this is one of the most misunderstood things in western discourse. Either there's a lot of the *one of the most misunderstood things about China* or the others aren't all that misunderstood?
You'll forgive me if I'm not exactly won over by this article.
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Are you guruevi? Or just channeling him? Go back to your epoch times and falung gong and associated religious nuttery.
PS it's not a very sucessful genocide where the "target population" is increasing faster than the rest of China.
God damn some people are stupid.
What are you talking about? I'm not even saying if the genocide is happening or not happening. All I'm saying is that China said that it isn't and the rest of the world thinks it is. Which, from China's point of view, is a misunderstanding by the western world. And, I would think, a potential genocide is a bigger and larger misunderstanding than a social credit system. That's all I'm saying. Why are you so riled up?
For those that are interested, that Uighyrs population birth rate thing is blatantly fals
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West already has social credit... (Score:2)
... your credit score, held by equifax and other "credit bureaus" are exactly the same. Same for needing references for getting an appartment or job.
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Yep. Fuck China. (Score:2)
Their government and their hordes of quislings are an endless. present threat to pretty much the entire planet.
And it's time we started treating them as such.
And simple financial penalties won't deter them.
They'll simply recoup it from ever more blatant theft and graft.
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Yeah, we need to send them a strongly worded letter admonishing their actions.
China got us by the bat and balls and we know it.
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Only if we let this surrender shit continue.
Scobbie (Score:2)
One is left to wonder... (Score:2)
how much money maximum leader Pooh Bear paid MIT for this propaganda.
Consider: A one-party-rule dictatorship with dreams of global domination that jails people for thinking the wrong thoughts, being the wrong ethnicity, saying the wrong things, etc comes up with a scheme to rate each person's compliance with the orders from on-high and the people at MIT write POSITIVELY about this??? If it were The New York Times promoting the evil of a foreign dictator for free it would be understandable - they did it for
CCP propaganda brought to us by MIT?? (Score:2)
I have to say, it is well-crafted propoganda. Appearing to be critical while subtly dismissing those criticisms. Of course, reality can't be completely dismissed. I hope I am not the only one who notices that trying to shift all the criticized behaviors to regional governments falls right the hell apart when the central government just rubber-stam
"..promote state-sanctioned moral values" (Score:2)
This article is pure schill (Score:2)
What we do know about the social credit system is many things you do can be tracked and you can be locked out of important things you need to function in society.
You can be locked out of transportation and become essentially an
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Which shows just how truly ignorant you are. Free speech, and the right to vote, are cornerstones of Democracy, but free speech doesn't mean freedom from responsibility for what you said.
But when you're a public official, and preaching sedition, free speech doesn't quite protect you any more-- for instance, claiming the election was fraudulently stolen, in spite of a total lack of evidence, by your OWN administration, and party officials. Calling on your Vice President to overturn the electoral votes, or
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want to desperately do the same here. Unfortunately for them the First and Second Amendments have foiled their attempts.
They're doing it here. It's called an ESG score. You can earn a lucrative living right now if you can bullshit the c-suite into believing that you know how to ace an ESG audit.
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Establishment gaslighting. Only wingnuts have a problem with any of this, don't you know.
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Buy off the people who assign reputability, and look what you can do.