China's social credit system blocked 11M flights and 4M train trips | Hacker News Reader

China's social credit system blocked 11M flights and 4M train trips

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203 pointsjeffreyrogers129 comments

> Some provinces play a recorded message when someone tries to call a blacklisted debtor, informing the caller that the person they want to speak with has outstanding debts. And in May, a short cartoon with the photographs of debtors' faces began playing at movie theatres, on buses, and on public noticeboards with a voiceover that said: "Come, come, look at these [debtors]. It's a person who borrows money and doesn't pay it back."

Assuming that's being reported accurately...wow.

Although I'm always led to wonder to what extent the facts in articles like this are exaggerated in order to portray one of the US's main global competitors in a negative light.

It is quite the opposite: China is much crazier than the western press makes it out to be. If western media reported things about China too accurately, no one would believe them.

You really only have to read Chinese media to get this, reading even state-owned media (like China daily or global times) will leave you with a much more negative impression of China than reading CNN or NyTimes.

How do normal Chinese people feel about the things that go on?

China is so big and blocks access to information here and there for the average citizen that they might not think that it could be significantly better in the freedom part.

Officially? The state is always right.

In private? I think the government's ever tightening grip is going to explode in their face eventually.

Or the power of technology will enable them to repeat the message until public believes it. If you repeat something enough people start believing it. Fun exercise, check out persuasive techniques below and count how many of those China (and other governments) are employing en masse.

https://www.mindmeister.com/213923097/persuasive-techniques-...

The inability to instill belief is not the problem... the ability to instill belief is the problem. You instill belief in the place of social feedback, which breaks people's ability to react to the feedback the system is yielding, like "that's too much money being spent here" and "that's not enough money spent there" and "it turns out that while everyone believes everyone believes that the right answer is X, that in fact nobody believes it" and just an uncountable list of other adjustments societies have to make in order to survive.

In a hypothetical world where humans were not subject to social pressure and the corresponding ability of social systems to produce situations where privately everybody knows a thing but nobody is publicly allowed to acknowledge it... well... that's effectively a world on the other side of a singularity from us. Presumably it would have its own pathologies, greater ones for all I know. But it would not have this problem of entire societies riding off the rails because it applied ever stronger powers of social coercion to prevent the society from correctly (without reference to any particular definition of "correct") reacting to the changes that occur over time. It would have to come up with its own new pathologies.

This scenario doesn't fail when everybody stops believing in it; it fails, and then everybody stops believing in it.

(Peer pressure in the modern world is dangerous, and merely "being pressured to do drugs" is a fairly innocent instance of it, because that only does local harm. When you find yourself unable to speak out about your own beliefs to your own neighbors and friends because of the social costs, it's not just a problem for you, it's a problem for your society.)

This scenario doesn't fail when everybody stops believing in it; it fails, and then everybody stops believing in it.

The 21st century 1st world aspirant intelligentsia is in this situation right now.

When you find yourself unable to speak out about your own beliefs to your own neighbors and friends because of the social costs, it's not just a problem for you, it's a problem for your society.

My "tribe" is trapped in such a bubble. It's intellectually doomed.

Can you give an example of a belief or opinion that you feel unable to express to other members of your tribe?

Not the OP, so I'm not claiming to speak for him, but here are some views I've seen really upset left-leaning people despite having a fair amount of evidence to support them: heterosexual two-parent households are best for raising children, rape is less common now than in the past, unrestricted immigration hurts low-skill workers. I'm not necessarily saying these are all true, but they're at least open for debate, and you will lose friends in some parts of the US for voicing these opinions.

1) Many actions of Antifa are immoral, authoritarian, and bad for society. I can write this here on HN, but I've encountered what can only be described as toxicity on other social media and in person. (The most extreme example of this would be someone responding to a wedding invite by calling me a racist.)

2) Homo sapiens is a sexually dimorphic species, which results in some biologically driven differences on average between men and women. Again, I can write this here on HN, but I've encountered what can only be described as extreme toxicity on other social media and in person.

> Homo sapiens is a sexually dimorphic species, which results in some biologically driven differences on average between men and women.

the precision with which you said that is key. you can say things about populations that are not necessarily true of many, or even most, of the individuals in the population.

as a human, i can run, but how would you define running for a given cell? cells don't run, but a specific collection and configuration of cells can. other collections of cells can swim. still others do both.

You need to be more precise in your point #1, as you are in #2, where you specifically speak about populations on average, and not individuals.

Specifically, the actions you refer to are not perpetrated by antifascists as a whole. The groups calling themselves Antifa (a name shared by several specific antifascist activist groups in different countries) have several internal factions, and the violent protests that the news love to cover are specifically the actions of the minority black bloc factions of some Antifa groups, which are more or less autonomous "extreme activist" subgroups.

Normal Antifa paints over swastikas and run counter-protests against the KKK and similar groups. The black bloc activists tend more towards chaos and violence, out of a belief that violence is the only language fascists respond to, so they are fighting fire with fire, in their own words.

I don't dispute that some regular Antifa members turn a blind eye to black bloc actions, but certainly not all of them.

As a pacifist, I strongly support anti-fascism and ordinary Antifa, but I absolutely do not condone black bloc activities.

You need to be more precise in your point #1, as you are in #2, where you specifically speak about populations on average, and not individuals.

Then, if you've ever conflated a normal run of the mill republican or a libertarian or classical liberal or centrist with a fascist or nazi -- particularly without sufficient evidence -- or even if you've ever held your tongue while others representing Antifa have done so -- you are a hypocrite.

As a pacifist, I strongly support anti-fascism and ordinary Antifa, but I absolutely do not condone black bloc activities.

Do you oppose black bloc as vigorously and strongly as you've opposed fascism? Do you ever hold your tongue?

Decades back, there were people who hid their faces in masks, feeling strong in their numbers and anonymity, who created symbolic spectacles for their view of "justice." Some, not all of them, went around committing crimes of vandalism and even murder. These masks were white. Did any of the people who did not commit those crimes, but wore the same colors and held their tongues -- are any of them innocent, or are all of them complicit?

Until I see public communications from Antifa that they are opposing and repudiating the Black Bloc and their violence and vandalism, anyone with them who claims they are pacifists are hypocrites.

[flagged]

False equivalency in action.

That's sneaky. It's a meta-false-equivalency! You are trying to conflate equivalency in principle with equivalency in degree. Somehow, just a little violence and mayhem -- using authoritarian force to gain compliance -- is better because it is less. By that logic, a little rape better than a lot of it! Nice principle! In fairness, you probably just talked yourself into that, and didn't realize. You see, principles like human rights matter, and not adhering to them brings you into these contradictions.

Then, if you've ever conflated a normal run of the mill social democrat or a socialist or liberal democrat or centrist with a stalinist -- particularly without sufficient evidence -- or even if you've ever held your tongue while others representing right wingers have done so -- you are a hypocrite.

Fact: Many of those are equivalent in terms of being collectivist. The evidence is in on collectivist governments. (Which include Nazism and Fascism, by the way.) Stalinism is only the extreme endpoint. So people who do violence, do violence. Those who do not, do not. People who violate human rights are people who violate human rights. People who abet those violations, abet those violations. There is no contradiction there. The only equivalency is between those who would do violence to impose their political will on others who only seek to exercise their human rights to free speech. It's a moral equivalency on principle, as opposed to your intellectually bankrupt non-equivalency on quantity.

For the record, I save the terms "fascist" and "Nazi" for actual fascists, including the ones trying to be cute about it

Do you correct and speak out against your fellow Antifa who mess that up? Not doing so is basically like standing by while someone racially bashes someone. (An experience that I know first hand, by the way: being racially bashed while others stand around.) Lumping people into groups, when it hides the truth and short-circuits logic is disgusting to me. Standing by, complicit, when people smear others in your name is just as bad.

Black Bloc beats up fascists and yes, cause petty vandalism.

You absolutely cannot draw equivalency between them. They are in completely different leagues.

Then by your own words, you are alright with just a little bit of immorality, violation of human rights, and authoritarian use of force, just because you see fit to do it. A little bit of what fascists do -- beating people up and intimidating them for their view of "justice" -- is alright, because it's not as bad, being less in quantity than Nazis. Thanks for clearing that up.

Any movement that depends on the other side being worse to justify itself has failed to justify itself on principles. Such a movement is morally and intellectually bankrupt.

I am not going to debate anything further with someone who conflates a wide range of different political movements under the same umbrella, "because they're all collectivist". That is a dangerously unstable high horse to sit on.

Good day.

Amazing. These seem like almost self-evident assertions. Thanks for answering.

This has been true of media since the beginning. It's certainly at play in social media today. It has been glaringly true of print and television media for decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

That is essentially what led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Although China's economy functions better and conditions seem to be improving for the average Chinese person, so it's hard to say how it'll play out. Also the Tiananmen Square protests happened 30 years ago and the same government is still in power. So I think chances are good that they'll be able to hold onto power for the foreseeable future. As long as they continue to do well economically at least.

> China's economy functions better

China's economy developed under a multi-person single-party system. That has devolved into a dictatorship. I would be cautious about using the last thirty years as a baseline for the next fifty.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deng_Xiaoping

> That is essentially what led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Care to elaborate? (full disclosure: I was born and raised in SU and lived in it for 20 years of my life and then another 20 in Russia after the fall). My family were "dissidents", we were under almost constant surveillance since at least 1980 (when I went to the 5th grade) and I can tell that the grip weakened every year until Andropov, who tried to hysterically tighten it, but it didn't work already.

In my simplified opinion, it was just the oil price that killed the Soviet Union. It went from $120 in 1980 to $23 in 1986. Soviet Union as any sufficiently developed socialist economy became more and more dependent on the external supply of goods for which it had to get some hard currency. It basically just run out of money and went bankrupt.

My understanding is that people within the Soviet Union (including within the Communist Party) saw that conditions in the West were better and became disillusioned with the Soviet system, which enabled Gorbachev to make his reforms. But I wasn't there and only know what I've read so you're probably right that the economy had a larger role than I'm giving it credit for.

> My understanding is that people within the Soviet Union (including within the Communist Party) saw that conditions in the West were better and became disillusioned with the Soviet system

Yes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15129713

Gorbachev also blames Chernobyl contributing to the fall of the SU in his memoirs.

> How do normal Chinese people feel about the things that go on?

That can be really hard to find out. Chinese culture looks down on people who criticize their own group in front of outsiders. So it's bad to truthfully criticize your family in front of a neighbor, even if you do it at home, and similarly bad to truthfully criticize your country in front of a foreigner. For an example, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuping_Yang_commencement_spee.... That student was ripped apart and called a traitor in regular media and social media, even though a lot of the things she said were true and often complained about. Add mass censorship to the mix, which denies access to honest options shared among the Chinese themselves, and it gets to be extremely difficult to get an accurate sense of true Chinese public opinion.

There are also other confounding factors: such as the CCP not emphasizing the distinction between the the government and the nation. Lots of people might not realize "you can love your country and hate your government" at the same time.

> "you can love your country and hate your government"

Reminds me of Russia very much. Self-proclaimed "patriots" standard response to any critics of government is "you just hate everything Russian".

Generalized:

Self-proclaimed [X] standard response to any critics of [X] is "you just hate everything [X]".

I think it's a standard self-defense mechanism for any meme in the Dawkins sense. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

Slightly off-topic, but you might want to avoid using "[X]" as a general placeholder - I was momentarily thrown off, as I expected each instance of X to be the same.

Self-proclaimed Republican standard response to any critics of Republicanism is "you just hate everything Republican".

It kind of works. Perhaps I need to include parts of speech?

Self-proclaimed Feminist standard response to any critics of Feminism is "you just hate everything female".

I think the main thing is that the second placeholder must be a subset of a more general, separate third placeholder.

What a nightmarish reality to live in. You can’t trust your own parents, friends, neighbors, etc.

> What a nightmarish reality to live in. You can’t trust your own parents, friends, neighbors, etc.

I think you missed my point. That's inaccurate and not what I intended to communicate.

My point was that Chinese can complain about their country among themselves, but there are social taboos against doing the same thing among foreigners. The implication is that when a foreigner asks a Chinese person what they really think about their country, they'll probably get a whitewashed version rather than their true feelings.

If you read Chinese, you can usually get a sense from Weibo (Chinese version of twitter), sometime censorship come into play but those are always after the fact.

If you are interested, there is an interview with Chinese people in the street about this system [1].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAIKh7AnTIk

This channel is very interesting. Thank you!

What it takes to be normal? I mean, I'm a human being who can type comment and send it online, does that makes me normal?

Anyways, I actually asked around about that topic on an domestic Chinese online forum that only had few dozens of visitors, the result that I've received showing that the most of those people who replied are actually ... let say ... not in the opposition of it.

Things are vastly different on another domestic website, where most of people are (implicitly) against it.

So, it's actually depends on who you asking. And remind you, we Chinese are also effected by echo chambers.

this is a very interesting phenomena to me -- the truth being too ridiculous to believe even if it confirms our biases and supports our worldview.

do you have any examples?

It’s like trying to explain to an American what a 800 2.5ppm AQI day feels like. They think, LA during a forest fire or something, since they can’t really fathom anything beyond that.

For the same reason, they can’t really fathom Xi’s cult of personality that his is building, CNN can’t describe it since the reality would come off as bad fiction. But reading Global Times on any odd day of the week, it is fairly apparent that it really is the truth.

So why is the Western media inaccurately portraying China?

The Western media doesn't know how to portray China, or any foreign country. Everything is a caricature and taken as a mere curiosity or monstrosity. It remains at the stage of minstrelsy and Indian dress-up. If you read serious news from abroad, you'll see this.

Reading news about New Zealand from the international media, you'd think that it's some quaint rural backwater country, where its biggest problems are picking a new flag and people throwing dildos at politicians.

The news doesn't like to report on the growing methamphetamine problem, the youth suicide rate, or the increasing poverty. And why would it? Nobody overseas cares about these things happening in NZ, they have these problems at home.

You're giving the wrong impression. Let's parse this a bit. China is "crazier" in that it's different in a way that's hard to explain in Western discourse. In order to analogize for the reader, quite inadequately really, the portrayal becomes "exaggerated" and "incomprehensible". To the extent that what's different and unusual is generally perceived as "negative" -- because if they were positive you'd be doing that in your society -- the portrayal of China tends to be negative. Both views are valid.

If it's that much crazier, why is it whenever I visited China it didn't seem crazy at all? Are they that good at hiding things from foreigners?

I should add that I don't stick to the expat bubble and I can understand Mandarin.

Reading China Daily and the Global Times, you also get stories about all the good things that happen in China. So it definitely seems more well balanced. Whereas the Western press seems to only focus on the negative and sensationalist pieces.

And also: Hou Yunchun, is quoted as saying the system needs to be improved so "discredited people become bankrupt."

That's pretty clear exactly what they are going for. Not a lot of ambiguity there, but it's unclear if it's a strategy that will have a positive outcome, my guess is probably not. Certainly not ethical in my opinion.

This gives you a nice feedback loop, because once the person becomes bankrupt, you can use the bankruptcy to (further) discredit them...

The US has the lite version of this where the poor pay disproportionally more for everything and face harsher penalties for when stuff goes wrong.

Can't see the benefit of creating so many losers. Somebody who owes money gets blocked from having a job? Not smart.

Somebody who owes money can't take a trip? Kind of smart.

The article was careful to put that quote in context, which you haven't supplied here.

They were almost certainly referring to the system being used against debtors who are not paying their debts. It's not a case of saying "people who have a bad score should be made bankrupt" but "people who are not paying their debts should have so much social pressure exerted on them that they would rather go bankrupt than not pay their debts".

Their are situations I can imagine under such a system that are unethical, but I'm not as certain that it's unethical by definition.

It’s quite extreme but is it so much different from the US’s system of publicly shaming suspects using their mugshots in sensation pieces?

I'm not sure why this got down voted. While I do think some of the Chinese methodologies/laws are a bit extreme, we have similar punishments and rules in the United States. Certain felonies cause people to lose the right to vote or own guns. Companies can perform background checks and not hire you based on criminal record as well. You can also be denied loans and housing based on a numerous amount of factors. Go apply for a house loan and see how invasive that is.

In regards to the comment on shaming, we are very horrible about that. The moment you are arrested/jailed, a nice little mugshot of you appears on the internet. This all despite the fact that you have not yet been tried and convicted.

I think in the U.S. we should also be challenging our own moral compass a bit more.

I've always found that really incomprehensible as well - it's not something that is allowed here (legally) and it seems like it's basically just mean and nothing else. Why does that even happen?

> Although I'm always led to wonder to what extent the facts in articles like this are exaggerated in order to portray one of the US's main global competitors in a negative light.

What you should be wondering is how much is glossed over to avoid painting a major trading partner in a bad light.

I think this mainly seems bad because of the risk of false positives. If someone has a legitimate outstanding debt, then everyone who calls him should be made aware of that - all of them are at risk of being suckered into lending him more money otherwise. I've been stung by entering an agreement with someone who had failed to repay his debts - guess who the next person he didn't pay was? Western countries have sex offenders registers for the same reason.

Western media does not get the eastern world. A BBC journalist said it is stupid and oppressive to ban cow slaughter in India. So I asked him if it is oppressive for USA to ban Cat and Dog meet when many people want to eat them. He was deeply offended.

Just about last week NYTimes published a piece where they called a certain two penny politician "Prime minister material" so I asked my friend why would NYT publish such inaccurate description. Her response was "he has such amazing english and Oxbridge accent".

Indians worship Shiva-Lingam (a complex idol that looks like a penis.) So a Berkley student/researcher. said Indians worship Penis which is weird and is symbol of patriarchy. I asked her if worshiping a cross makes Christians a cult of torture and worshipping a zombie corpse (jesus) makes them necrophillic.

Western media has a very different outlook (white man's burden) and will never truly comprehend the eastern culture.

I couldn't agree more. It's also quite insulting then they think their opinions are of some universal truth even when presented with evidence. I have seen Americans with superiority complex when faced with an unfamiliar surrounding. They seems to go around talking about how everyone is doing everything wrong and their own culture is without fault. The majority of Europeans I have met seem a lot more willing to accept other cultures. Europeans often have to learn a second language that isn't English and frequently travel to neighboring countries. I think the simple understanding that there is a world outside theirs from a young age makes a world of difference is separating their perceived negative emotions and facts.

I am going to get serverely down-voted for this, but look at seanmcdirmid as an example. He almost exclusively posts on Chinese articles on Hacker News. His past comments always paints an entire country as negative. He likes to state his opinions are facts and when saying something mildly racist, he ends is posts with "my wife is chinese". Like that makes any difference, its the equivalent of those saying they aren't racist cause their neighbors are black. I have no doubt his experience in China has largely been negative, but with his attitude I am not surprised.

I live in Cambodia and I see this all the time from tourists and expats. It's actually stunning how nearly all of them parrot the same stereotypes about the country, even though they've barely spent any time here and have only read secondhand information from racists who came here before them. A mild but classic stereotype is something about Asians and "saving face", as if avoiding embarrassment whenever possible isn't a shared tendency of everyone all over the world. Another favorite is complaining about a "foreigner tax" (raising the price for foreigners), when in fact that is actually quite rare and is only perceived to happen because touristy spots and expat bubbles have higher rents and thus higher prices. This is not even getting into the more malicious variety of shitheads and degenerates that come solely to exploit the country, all while endlessly complaining about and stereotyping the people here.

I just saw a episode about Angkor Wat on Travel channel where the narrator totally misrepresented the purpose of temple and shiva-lingam. He made the Khmer look like some kind of savages beating slaves to build a the temple to gain supernatural powers from the lingam. In reality the Angkor Wat was a Vishnu and later a Buddhist temple not so much of Shiva temple.

Foreigner tax can be seen as discount for locals. This is a common practice in USA too where locals get discounts and often free entry into the places like Botanical gardens, public parks and so on. Hunting licenses in your home state are around 10x cheaper than another other state in USA. All the H1b, Gc petitions can be seen as a "foreigner tax". US government forces H1Bs to pay social security but does not allow them to benefit from it. That is far more significant tax than what Cambodia might charge the occasional tourist.

Yes, entrance to Angkor Wat could be considered a valid example of a foreigner tax (for those that don't know, entrance is free for Cambodian citizens). But I was more referring to drunken old men who think that their pineapple was overpriced by 25 cents.

It's going to be interesting/scary to see how the whole system plays out in the coming years and decades. It's obviously quite dystopian, but what if it works (in the sense that the population will overall be happy with it, not just from the view of a authoritarian government of course), there is no blatant corruption and the Chinese people are generally happy with it?

Maybe such technocratic methods of social control will become the norm in many countries? Scary idea for us in the west, but the Chinese model (authoritarian government + free-ish markets) already seems to be a credible competitor to western liberalism, a successful social credit system would be even scarier.

>there is no blatant corruption

So, carefully hidden corruption would be ok? Because that is what will happen, and probably already happening. If you're a family member of a ranking official in the Party, your score is just set to whatever you like, regardless of your transgressions. Eventually people will become aware of more and more instances of this and the system will actually generate unrest.

I like a comment like this. It's free of fear, and knee-jerk response.

I actually see your point. Some people may feel a sense of peace by being tightly constricted by behavior that they're taught is OK to do, and what is not. In such a system, there's actually security in there. Some people love not having to decide how to live.

But this is what trumps your thought: people in China wouldn't even be able to HAVE the conversation you and I are having right now (about this very meta topic, about how to organize ourselves) - and therein lies the problem.

We objectively need certain individual civil freedoms, to even grow and develop as a society.

So for humanity's future, China sucks. Its ideas are archaic, and its totalitarianism ISN'T the way to go.

They can have it, they just can't have it in a public forum where it can spread. Participate in no communicable memes!

But that is, at least in the Western concept of social iteration, the only way to scale & accelerate discourse.

No public discourse is just no discourse for most of its purposes. (Except for maybe personal entertainment.)

There's peer to peer dissemination as well. A network spanning a whole country nonetheless

I'm interested in how the authoritarian/capitalist model works when the growth is no longer modernizing, but innovating.

The other insidious part of social credit is that the score is partially based on the score of your network. That encouranges deeper segregation of the Haves against the Have-Nots. A high score group wont link to low score members,meven if relatives or former friends.

Two stars; wasn't a harmonious interaction.

Today it’s Chinese citizens. Tomorrow they’ll tracking foreigners outside China’s boarders and they’ll be putting pressure on Apple, Delta, and other international companies to fall in line as well.

If Facebook can't legally do it, China has a competitive advantage, and US firms will start buying up that data for even less cost

Considering they've already been known to pressure web services to remove anti-China sentiments, this is scarily possible.

China already does that. Twitter and Facebook regularly suspend dissidents' accounts when China asks them to do so. See [1] about Chinese billionaire who lives in the US and the ordeal he was put through.

There's also a case of a Marriott Hotels employee who "liked a tweet" about Tibet and got fired for it after pressure from China [2].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/world/asia/guo-wengui-chi...

[2] https://work.qz.com/1220881/marriott-hotels-fired-an-hourly-...

Does the social credit system ever charge higher prices to low scorers rather than banning or shaming them? Skimming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System#Involveme... it looks like this might be done to some extent for businesses so I wonder about individuals.

To what extent is the social credit system a mechanism to collect bribes, i.e., is it possible to have one's record fixed by paying off the right people?

> Does the social credit system ever charge higher prices to low scorers rather than banning or shaming them?

That sounds like the system here (US). Low scorers receive much higher interest rates -> significantly higher final prices charged

I am sure this could be formalized with a super low limit, high rate credit card.

Perhaps they should be jailed instead?

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/debtors...

Imprisoning people who don't pay official fines is normal in most western countries.

So, playing devil's advocate, why then is it so outrageous to prevent people from flying or staying in five star hotels in order to put pressure on them to make them pay? Wouldn't you prefer being free and not being able to fly over being in prison? Similarly we also have credit rating agencies collecting information on your financial status and they may as well deny you access to certain services based on that information. And yet another interesting field is people being ignorant or simply assholes, throwing your trash on the ground, being really loud at night, all the annoying small things making the world a worse place while not really being bad enough to justify using the usual big judicial system hammer all the time. Doesn't sound that unreasonable that retaliating with a couple of small stings to your freedom could make you reconsider your behavior.

I had this thought too. It sounds, just from those couple sentences in the article, like the things people are being denied are only expensive luxuries. Which, if you're in debt, you probably shouldn't be spending money on anyway and it might even help to have an outside party keep you in check while you get your finances back on track.

I think the big question to ask is whether these policies are geared to pressure/aid people in getting into a better financial situation, or whether they're geared to permanently punish people who got into a bad situation in the first place. The part mentioned above sounds like it could be the former, but:

"...the system needs to be improved so 'discredited people become bankrupt.'"

Sounds pretty condemningly like the latter.

I totally agree, such a system certainly has a big potential to be misused, either by design or by abuse. But if you think about it as a softer judicial system, you might be able to get something useful out of it. Just be really careful to not go too far and use the same care as in the normal judicial system when building it.

If there's one thing we can all agree on about China's flavor of authoritarianism, it's that it's efficient. When they decide to fix something - be it their economy, or their environmental problems, or corruption, or anything else - they just get it done.

Of course, the flip-side of maximal executive power is that it can be abused. In the past that's how authoritarian governments have basically always turned out. But China seems to be getting closer than any other to creating a version that's actually functional. It's scary, but also fascinating to watch from afar.

I'm not banking on it turning out to be a good thing, but I am curious.

China promised us in 2010 that they would fix their pollution problem in 4 years. That didn’t happen.

Every 8 or so years there is another crackdown on corruption, as part of political housekeeping. Each time they say the problem is fixed, but then it comes back.

China is the worst example of “getting things done” if that is your standard. The central government has been less powerful than you would think historically. Now, is it “different this time”? Maybe, but it definitely wasn’t before.

The Chinese system seems clearly intended to punish, not to get justice for those owed money.

There are very few types of debts a western country will imprison for: Official fines (for a crime that you were proven guilty of) and child support are pretty much the only two in the US.

From the article: "it is unclear what offenses those targeted in the travel ban have committed."

"Hou Yunchun, is quoted as saying the system needs to be improved so "discredited people become bankrupt."

Trying to compare those two systems is pretty blind. You can argue the US system isn't perfect, but it's hardly the same.

Not everywhere - there are countries for example that put you in a kind of servitude to the state, where a state-controlled agency takes all of your income and gives you a stipend to buy food and other necessities with. The rest gets used to pay stuff like your house first, and then all of it gets put into your various debts.

Seeing as it's basically indentured servitude, I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's definitely better than prison though, because you're still (more or less) free to move around whenever you're not working.

Seems like they haven't learned from other countries that have had trouble with unpaid debts and taxes. People can't pay their debts if the penalties for owing the debts prevent them from holding a job.

The government might not care if they pay their debts. They'd rather kill some chickens to scare the monkeys [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_the_Chickens,_to_Scare...

Hunh. B.F. Skinner lives!

Another 5 or 10 years, maybe we'll be softened up enough for that.

"We told you 6 months ago to lose the beard. 50 points off your SCore. What do you say to that?"

I'm thinking of Topeka in A Boy and His Dog.

That means it’s working as intended, right?

Ah, the times we live in!

This makes me scared.

We need to do whatever it takes to ensure this type of system never gets implemented in America.

People are digitally tarred and feathered every day in the US, even if they don't take part in social media. Reddit alone has dozens of "bullying" communities, where random people are subjected to ridicule. 4Chan is a whole other level.

When people take part in social media, they only make themselves a more likely subject of the bullying (e.g. twitter's ability to pile onto someone, like a teenager wearing a chinese-style dress).

Certainly we need to work on the problem of toxic online communities and cybe bullying, but surely industrialised and coordinated state bullying, censorship and humiliation is at another level?

Espciallly give the that China has exactly the same problems of toxic communities and bullying anyway. It’s not as if the West has a monopoly on that, so somehow these some sort of balance between the two.

The difference is that those people aren't backed by the government.

Systems that accomplish the same goals already exist in the US, but typically not through official channels. For instance, because of the first amendment, you can't block web sites or censor media in the US. The workaround here is a system much more complex than the Great Firewall of China, and involves ownership and connections with media outlets, influence of editors by said owners and also by threatening to withhold access to key officials, propaganda campaigns, smearing of anti-establishment figures and narratives, planting journalists, internet sock puppet accounts, forum manipulation, AI algorithms for closed-loop influence and sentiment analysis, and social media filter bubbles. In the US, the idea is to achieve the same effect as censorship while convincing the public that they arrived at the desired conclusion themselves.

What's more American than privatizing everything, including our own oppression?

Some of those things might be true. But you won't have your life ruined from saying bad things about the president or government.

So I'd say the West in general are in an objectively better position in that regard.

No but you can have your life ruined for wearing a chinese-style dress. Or atleast get bullied by couple thousand faceless people on the internet.

too late.

Lots of companies, in states that allow it, will make a hiring decision contingent on passing a credit check

You mean like the now-dead mugshots.com site that would post information about people accused, but not convicted of crimes, then make their money through extortion -- charging $500 to take down the photo?

Edit: the site is still alive, but the owners have been arrested: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/18/mugshot-phot...

Well you better get to work, because the precursors to this are all in place already.

Welcome to dystopia, have a seat and watch. Until you're at the other end of the viewpoint.

Where there's demand, there shall be supply. Wouldn't be surprised if there's already a black market for stolen identities on their version of the "dark web".

It's the new Soviet internal passport system.

> It's the new Soviet internal passport system.

China already has that, the Hukou, and has for some time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system

Ya, Hukou is just on another level of crazy. But since the mid 2000s, internal migration has been allowed without any hard constraints, you just can’t access social services (like schools) as locals can. Well assuming you aren’t a Uighur.

Assuming this is factual, how long until they have a suicide epidemic?

One thing I have noticed over the last year or so is the strongly pro-PRC (but anonymous) posting that happens in HN comments. I haven't tested the waters with a post like this before, so I'm not sure if it will be brigaded. But I'm guessing you'll be able to watch the posts I'm talking about roll in here over the day today.

I've noticed this occurring with greater frequency then it used to. It seems any mainstream or close to mainstream article about China will have several clearly Google Translated (or equivalent) comments about how innovative China is in buzzword technology or industry

you are worried too much. Hacker News has not that big impact which get the attention of 50 cents

Doesn't it though, isn't this a forum hosted by one of the most influential funds out there.

That depends on what you mean by "big impact". In terms of raw view count, no, but in terms of prestige and influence, maybe. For example, I've noticed that the comments section for The Economist is one of the places most overrun by 50 Cent-ers; The Economist isn't very popular but has readership among a lot of elites in both government and industry, which is presumably why it's targeted so heavily. The same thing might be happening here.

Somewhat off topic: I've noticed that, as a non-subscriber, I can no longer comment on Economist articles. Is it just me, or has that happened to everyone?

Given how bad the comment sections were getting, I can't blame The Economist if they closed comments to all non-subscribers. It's a way to deal with the astro-turfers, the trolls, the off-topic rants, and other garbage. And if you want to do it badly enough to pay, well, at least The Economist got paid...

Cearly translated means you’re hearing a real Chinese person.

Pro-PRC shilling is a pervasive phenomenon - see the 50-Cent Party.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

This comment breaks the HN guidelines by insinuating astroturfing or shilling without evidence. Please don't do that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Opposing views aren't evidence of astroturfing. The overwhelming majority of the time, it's simply users with different opinions than yours. The internet tendency to imagine brigaders under the bed is worse than the thing it's imagining. I've posted a ton about this if anyone wants more: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....

Real abuse exists; if you think you're seeing some, you should tell us at hn@ycombinator.com. We ban astroturf accounts when we find them, but it's much rarer than the epidemic claim that it simply must be happening because no one could possibly post X in good faith. (Hint: yes they could and yes they do.)

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17136276 and marked it off-topic.

So, you really took my post and ran with it, and it's not the first time this has happened. I see you didn't copypaste that text and you actually typed it out, so just to state it clearly, I did not say it must be some kind of astroturfing, and I did not say some astroturfing must be happening because no one could possibly post X in good faith. I stated I've noticed strongly pro-PRC posts which are also anonymous, and I find it interesting. You took my use of the word "brigaded" to assume that I implied an astroturfing context and that is not the case. I suppose in the same spirit of this thread, you're saying that brigading can only happen in an astroturfing context, which is as much a toxic idea as accusations of astroturfing in the first place. Also, I do not have faith in anyone's ability to detect any kind of astroturfing but the lowest-hanging fruit. It does happen as stated here, but having worked in some shitty companies in my time, it's basically impossible to detect (let alone prevent) if it's done with really any amount sophistication.

I take your point that you didn't explicitly say all those things—I meant more that they are the kinds of things that come up routinely in this category. But your comment did point in the direction that the guidelines ask you not to go, and your reply here confirms it.

Dark insinuations about "pro-PRC" comments (or pro-whatever, or anti-whatever) are very much part of this genre. One of the most striking and dismaying phenomena we observe as moderators is that people are far, far, you'd-be-amazed-how-far too to quick to interpret differing opinions as evidence of bad faith on the internet. It poisons the well, and we're not allowing that here.

Unless you're talking about something specific and have at least a bit of evidence to back it up, subthreads like this are unsubstantive and off topic.

So I'll comment on this using an anonymous account.

The reason I do so is because the general atmosphere (not just in HN) seems to be very anti-China. I'm afraid if I say anything that defends China, that I will be harmed in my professional life.

In the company of others, I've learned to keep my opinions to myself.

Thanks for your post. This makes a lot of sense, as I've done this myself for other topics for the same reason. The account I normally post from grew out of a situation just like that. It makes perfect sense and could really account for a lot of that.

Remember the American "no fly list"?

How about the American "threat scoring system"?

China's doing just fine compared to the land of the free.

We must remember our own narrative: the individual is sovereign; and keep ourselves from collectivism, including a "social currency".

Not significantly different from underbanked US people who cant obtain unsecured credit cards or a checking account by have a low FICA score or ban in CheckSystems.

Please do not comment without reading the article.

It is extraordinarily different.

Please dont comment by reading only one a singles article.

https://www.wired.com/story/age-of-social-credit/

I think some of the fears about such an overt system being implemented in the US or other Western democracies are overblown. A democracy will always feature different opinions and the opposition will always object to a social credit scoring by the ruling party or coalition.

The bigger problem I foresee is that other autocracies will see China’s social credit system as a basis for their own societies, much in the way that China proved to the developing world that you don’t need Western-style democracy to be a successful and wealthy economy.

Edit: upon reflection, I think a far larger threat for the West is if China starts socially scoring us. Then we’re in trouble. China already owns or has influential stakes in far too many Western media outlets, especially Hollywood. And I can’t think of a single way that the West could stop China from doing it.

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