China’s New Tool for Social Control: A Credit Rating for Everything
wsj.com
wsj.com
Then again this is China, people have no way of speaking out against their government without risking their lives, and the government has no obligation other than maintaining their power over the population.
I almost feel as if Xi is losing his grip on the population by introducing drastic internal policies like this that only names goals that appear to benefit the greater good but almost certainly driving his own agenda, even if it earns the ire of his surrounding peers.
A foreign policy analysis of Xi's external facing policies are almost certainly always to further his internal grip which explains the bizarre & seemingly counter-productive positions he took against North Korea and South China Sea, that further drove neighbouring countries to America's arms....but with strange turn of events it seems that they will be undone from Trump's camp, much to the delight of Putin & Xi.
Time will tell, but it's doubtful we will have anything but a government mouthpiece statician announcing the success of such policies.
It's tough to know the real truth in societies where it is actively suppressed and manipulated by a single central entity. It's also difficult to say how long such systems will last without continuously taking on more risky and expensive internal policies that lags behind changing technology that disseminates information.
but what's that saying? The person wielding the biggest stick in the room is the source of truth implying force is always the lowest common denominator in human societies. Afterall, America wouldn't be where it is today without its 14 nuclear powered floating airports with the most advanced weapon technologies that casts a shadow on any port it chooses to refuel in.
I mean, is it so different from a privately-issued credit score? Transunion isn't a government agency but your credit score can keep you from certain jobs and apartments in addition to loans.
They are both scores which are used for a variety of purposes. That's as far as the similarity goes.
The credit bureaus have a tiny slice of information. In reality, they know almost nothing about you besides your debts. They certainly don't know your politics.
Jay walking or speaking out against the government online will probably not affect my credit score.
Not to mention that China has a real problem with bad credit, the technocratic solution is to look at snooping & big data as the fix: a very modern approach.
Also i don't think that the technocrats who are ruling China have much in common with the cultural revolution: for example Deng Xiaoping was purged twice during the cultural revolution (i wonder how he survived the first purge).
Based on what I've read, the South China Sea policies make sense from a certain point of view, that China is the dominant power in the region who can dictate to others without negotiation, and eventually their neighbors must accept that. (That was China's position until the Opium Wars in the mid-19th century demonstrated that China lacked the military power to dictate to or even resist Western nations.) If that is China's long-term plan, then it's the right approach to dictate the status of the South China Sea and view resistance as short-term and ultimately futile. Negotiating would undermine China's standing.
It's a backward point of view: The world and China do much better when we manage conflict via democratic institutions based on rights than by might-makes-right. Who longs for the days of great power wars?
For years their argument against the West was about why we spend so much time and resources trying to push our ideals to others, when we could take a practical path and be more successful economically
Because that creates political friction, leading to conflict, leading to profitable arms sales. So much of the US's cavalier foreign policy is geared toward propping up the MIC between the periodic big wars it takes on for itself. Eisenhower's warning came true and nobody is doing anything about it.
This is a common argument used by those who want to oppress others; here's the flaw in it:
I agree! It is none of my business and that's the whole point of liberty: Individuals should have self-determination; that is, freedom. Their choices and interests are none of my business, and they are none of their oppressors' business either.
If they don't have the self-determination to control their own lives and express their own interests, then often there isn't much they can do to get it; their oppressors hold the power. That's when other people have a responsibility not to close their eyes to oppression but to do something about it. The goal is not to tell the oppressed what to do, but to give them the freedom to decide and act for themselves.
I know I have my self-determination and freedom because of the efforts and sacrifices generations of others have made for me; millions have paid with their lives and their fortunes; more gave up careers, went to jail, suffered ostracism, torture and worse; generations made it their jobs to make laws, creating institutions and more to ensure I have my freedom today. Is my response that it is none of their business? Or do I have a share of the work to do?
That's certainly true of some people, but note all the people throughout history (e.g., in my prior comment) who have made great sacrifices for it. If nobody was willing to sacrifice, there would be no freedom or democracy today.
It's simply a matter of affordability, the West can afford to care about human rights, refugees, giving foreign aid because it can and it believes that it's not a question of politics but an evolution of thinking that emerged as a result of 200+ years of world wide colonialism.
It's interesting to see that the East has been unable to take the same route but it's slowly changing in developed democracies like Japan and South Korea.
My fear is that it works all too well, especially in Chinese society.
Giving people brownie points for "being nice" or "not shitting in the streets" seems like a different ball game.
And IMO they should stop using it outside that context. People shouldn't have to worry about whether they can find a job or apartment based on having poor credit. Turns it into a game that everyone is forced to play instead of a simple metric that financial institutions can use to determine your credit-worthiness.
I've never had bad credit, but when I started working office jobs I actually went out and got a credit card I didn't need just so I could use it a few times and pay it off in full at the end of each month. Completely worthless process that I had to involve myself in simply to build my credit up. What a joke.
Where I can see it failing is for people who live "outside" the system - I have a friend who refuses to uses banks and deals only in cash and ancient coins - he can't find an above-the-board place to live because of his lack of credit score. But with that said, he does have a high risk of not being able to make rent on time, so its difficult to say what the policy should be.
As for finding a job, I don't know of any instance where a poor credit score would prevent you from getting a job, other than getting a security clearance, but that also seems reasonable since the government wants to know if you have any blackmail-able "money troubles" that an enemy actor can take advantage of.
That's the point. They designed the system of incentives and constraints to make you their customer.
But your second point is largely what I was getting at. People who don't want that to be a part of their life are starting to run into barriers to leading a normal life. At this point credit scores are used rather casually and don't have that high of consequences. But the trend is in the wrong direction, and I'm firmly against it continuing in the same way as the Chinese are bringing it.
I don't need a credit score to tell me I probably don't want this person as a tenant. They're a huge eviction risk (no system = no fallback for short-term cashflow issues), not to mention that I don't want to be dealing with hundreds of dollars in cash rent.
As an employer I would view it as a red flag, not disqualifiying but it would take some other evidence and good references to offset it.
I'm gonna be that guy: [citation needed]
Seems to come up a lot when reminders of China being ruled by a totalitarian regime come along
Yes, the US is not as bad as China as a place to live (look at the migration flow between them for simple proof), but it's worth noting that the same way people explain away the US's flaws can be done in other countries as well.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/07/08/us-police-shoo...
And you say riots and police being hunted? There is violent unrest in China, too. In both the US and China, the middle-class and the folks in power just hand-wave away the concerns of the victimised demographics, finding excuses for the state's poor treatment of them.
As many people are mocking and blocking #blacklivesmatter as are supporting it. What are those in power actually doing in response to the upset demographics in the US? Hot air. Nada. Zilch. Zip. Nothing with any real bite. Hence, blase.
The 'third strike' should, irrespective, mark you as a dangerous member of society, though depending on circumstances some stronger treatment might result in a different outcome.
I'm scared to think of what your utopia looks like.
At most, a few credit ratings company made this decision and "society" tolerates it for convenience. An equally workable system would be to to default to a high score and deduct points for bad behavior, but this would be bad for business as it wouldn't force people to get credit they don't need.
One of my credit cards gives me monthly updates on my credit score. It always lists 3 positive and 3 negative factors impacting my score, no matter how good the score.
Currently one of the 3 negatives is "highest credit card limit too low". Not debt:available. Just straight up "too low a credit limit on your highest-limit card". And yet, I could buy an entry level luxury car on several of my credit cards.
I'm not implying that a silly ding on my credit like that is as 'serious' as delinquent payments, but... well, the truth is, I have no idea. And isn't that the point?
> any port it chooses to refuel in
Do we have a lot of ports to refuel nuclear powered aircraft carriers?
However, like the other comment suggested, nuclear carriers rarely travel alone without the protection of large naval assets deployed around it.
If only AI was running all of the naval air assets on a carrier, no food, self sustaining & maintaining.
I'd imagine an increase of frequency in US naval carrier groups patrolling oceans closer as a result of the cost savings of reducing manned staff with AI and robots but that's another topic.
The US has something like this for travel, where the lowest tier is being on the "do not fly" list, and having a Global Entry card, which requires "extreme vetting", moves you to a higher tier where you can bypass some security lines.
Under the Communists China also has had (and maybe still does?) city block-level surveillance by neighbors of residential behavior.
> The US has something like this ...
The false equivalency comes up too much. I wrote some code in a couple hours the other day that is "something like" the Linux kernel, in that they are both code, both read from the network and output to the monitor, and both have bugs which will never be fixed. But if I want to communicate to others an accurate comparison of the two code bases, mentioning those similarities is misleading.
[0] http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/07/politics/no-fly-mistakes-cat-s...
[1] http://theresurgent.com/these-people-mistakenly-ending-up-on...
[2] https://theintercept.com/2016/04/06/class-action-suit-target...
[3] https://ccrjustice.org/home/get-involved/tools-resources/fac...
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/22/us-stops-bri...
Well then, I guess it is all the same.
I thought being on 'do not fly' lists came about because of one doing something that could be construed as anti-security, er...like terroristic in nature. I'm so confused with how some people commenting in these threads come up with off the wall, random and unrelated associations lol. It's exasperating to say the least.
The biggest perk for Global Entry (besides getting a known traveler number for Pre-Check eligibility) is that the process of filling out the customs paperwork is faster and more automated, and that the ratio of travelers : customs officers is lower.
While I have reservations about governments using a system like this as it is...you get into some fascinating and terrifying scenarios when you enable public access to this sort of thing. Imagine being added to some list because of an error, and then having the entire public viewing you and just assuming you are a bad person because you are on that list without giving you the chance to do anything about it or perhaps even know they are aware of that.
As a more tangible example, imagine if something like the infamous Lulu app (that lets women rate and apply tags to men they've dated and only lets other women see the ratings...kind of like an exclusive Yelp for men) was combined with ubiquitous AR. Now imagine you had a falling out with an ex and you're trying to start dating again. You now have to deal with all of the (potentially quite false) assumptions someone you might be interested in is making about you based on how your ex rated you in addition to whatever other assumptions they would normally make without it.
And odds are you'd never even know they made their decision before you even saw them because they previously scanned the room with a rating filter like Amazon and only care about people above their threshold. We worry now about the impact of filter bubbles with things like Facebook. Now think about having them applied to people you interact with in your day-to-day.
I could totally picture insurance companies being all over something like this, and it is really scary to think about the lack of transparency and how you'll never know if you are in one of those databases.
From a technology perspective, there might be some clever stuff there, but probably not.
It's just a sign of things to come I think.
The maximum age.
> If patrons break the rules, then ban them from every venue using PatronScan in North America.
> The Banned Patrons List is shared with every other venue using PatronScan
> PatronScan ID scanners give you live stats about […], the gender distribution, and the average age [of patrons].
Wow. Just … wow.
This is like asking, what's wrong with state owned security cameras on the streets? It's digitizing what bystanders have been doing for centuries.
There is a difference between security cameras and surveillance cameras. Surveillance cams are broadcasted somewhere else (maybe even over internet) and stored and reviewed. Security cameras - are for security incidents and shouldn't be broadcasted or footage stored longer than necessary (matter of hours or days depending on location).
Too bad often times these state owned security cameras are actually surveillance cams disguised as innocuous things which they aren't. There is this Will Smith movie "Enemy of the State", it's fiction but our dystopic society is becoming ever more scary.
Also, it seems https://www.servallbiometrics.com/ is the parent of PatronScan.
Nosedive is about a future where your social media rating affects your real life. As an example you might not be able to enter a popular restaurant if your social media score is too low because it makes the store look bad to have low score customers. Discounts and other perks are offered to people with high scores.
Say something some disagrees with and get downvoted which since your score affects your life you don't dare say something that might upset someone else.
It's a very scary episode in that is certainly seems like one possible future. We already have some small part of that future today with downvoted on places like HN and Reddit that while meant to promote civility have the unintended consequence discouraging decent. It's easy to imagine social media scores affecting more real world things.
Money is what forces humans today into a quantifiable scoring system. On one side is doom but it is worth thinking about that the other side could provide. "Today you have been credited 400 points for helping 100 elderly over the street, driving 50 disabled people to the doctor and returning 20 lbs of unused food". Then you don't have a monetary system pricing your actions, but you have central control over what gets priced in what way. Sounds familiar, I know. But just because none of us can imagine anything but money to fulfill this allocation function, does not mean that other thinkers are hard at work. Surely this is far away from western individualism, but not every country has bought into that. China is surely investigating it's options long term to opt out of various constraints imposed upon by global power systems, one of which is the global banking and monetary system.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea (I actually like it!), but conceptually it seems no different to the current monetary system, just with governments taking a more inventive approach to paying for public services.
"In that sense, perhaps the most shocking element of the story is not the Chinese government’s agenda, but how similar it is to the path technology is taking elsewhere."
This is because, for example, surveillance of social media posts have been an input to credit scores in countries like the United States for some time. (https://www.thenation.com/article/how-companies-turn-your-fa...)
In the United States, further, social media post and social relationship information is used across America to calculate real time police "threat scores", predictive crime measurements that are applied to prioritize law enforcement and surveillance efforts. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/the-new-w...
China unfortunately is not unique in this landscape of social gamification - the kind espoused by the Bush and Obama Administrations - perhaps most perfectly represented by the legal justifications and arguments by Washington insiders in the intellectual orbit of Cass Sunstein.
At best its thesis seems to be "these things are similar!" yet the headline and the intro is very misleading. Guilt by association is not a fair argument.
FICO using social media as a factor in its score would be extremely interesting were it true.
Apparently is wasn't completely fabricated after all.
Every article I read described it as a government system already implemented and measuring every aspect of your life, when it was actually a scheme created by a private company within their ecosystem and most people used it for showing off.
The government proposed system is still in pilot stage.
https://www.techinasia.com/china-citizen-scores-credit-syste...
I have a Sesame credit score. It's pretty low. The whole system seems incredibly creepy though, even without the misreported government political intrusion aspects. I basically have to let a private company know all the details of my education, work and personal life (plus they have my entire purchasing history on Taobao, which covers most aspects of my life), and then they'll give me a score. I totally understand the need for a credit score in the context of giving loans, but the threat is always that this score then gets applied to other arenas as a generalized trustworthiness rating.
Note that I don't totally disagree with Extra Credit in that such credit rating system may potentially be abused by government. However, from this Chinese version of wikipedia page of Sesame Credit[1], it specifically read as those credit rating agencies are independent 3rd party entities. Also in the use cases, it mentions online shopping transactions and dating site records, car rentals but nowhere does it mention social networking sites activities(I mean people don't talk about radical political views in their dating site profiles, do they?) like what Extra Credit claim Sesame Credits will source data from.
You gained 17 HP yesterday. You've just leveled up! Report to your neighborhood party representative for your complimentary face massage kit. [Share on Weibo] [Share on WeChat]
China has had similar systems for decades .... The US has something like this for travel
and
How different is this from our current credit system through FICO scores?
Sorry, that technique doesn't work. Come up with something new.
Its a bit like the American credit system in that it can kick people in the balls...except its more arbitrary, outside of the persons control and very vulnerable to abuse.
That combined with mass surveillance, censorship, and the fact that the People's Liberation Army serves the communist party and not the Chinese people gives them total control over the population.
China's score is by government and it determines your mere existence. May be you end up in jail if the score goes below something. Also it is not about finances but about your opinions.
Only in theory.
For one thing, you don't opt into FICO - the company I transact with chooses to share my information with FICO, without giving me any choice on the matter.
The only way you can opt out of FICO is if you never use the financial system, not have a job, or a place to live. Unless you're an animal, or an undiscovered cave hermit, good luck.
> May be you end up in jail if the score goes below something.
Citation needed.
Not really. For example you can create a startup that might help banks find dependable borrowers more effectively than FICO and you can totally decimate FICO.
When I arrived in this country and wanted to borrow to buy a car I did not have a FICO score but I had a very good job. I borrowed outside the conventional banking system with a little higher APR.
FICO is like cellphones or email that has won and become common because it is the best alternative than everything else. One can certainly refuse to use cellphones but then that life would be highly inconvenient indicating how much value cellphones have brought to our life. FICO similarly has brought a lot of value to our lives so much that living without it is highly inconvenient.
BTW living without FICO is simpler and pretty much common thing in USA. How do you think illegal immigrants, students, H4 dependents etc. do financial transactions ?
I don't know about illegal immigrants, but anyone in the US on a valid visa can walk into a bank, show a teller their passport, and open an account.
Also, most of us aren't so blessed as to have a landlord (Dorm housing) that will forego a credit background check.
Is this just speculation? Maybe you end up in jail?
Of course given the way China works miffing the government actually means an existential threat. Unlike American who take for granted things like trial by jury, protection from cruel punishment, unauthorized searches etc. Chinese people dont have any such rights. By default they live because the government lets them.
We would never know he full extent of such score keeping.
(IIRC in CA it's illegal to use for car insurance rating, but I'm guessing that in practice that just means they use something else known to have a good correlation with it.)
However, it doesn't seem that more data is going into the FICO score. Such as, personal, non-finance related data.