and here in the US its done through proxies who sue to get access to donation lists, list of those who supported petitions, access to previously courted locked documents, and such, in order to shut down speech or actions they don't like. sometimes even government agencies get involved with political activist abusing their position.

so while China might codify affecting people's credit scores and "social" score make no assumption that similar hasn't always been in Western countries, we just like to paint others as bogeymen to avoid looking at our own flaws