China’s social credit system doesn’t exist – at least not yet

I appreciate you clarifying the incorrect representation of the system. People tend to assume everything in China is communism, it really is not. This is a capitalistic change.

> Imagine trying to rent a house or get a loan without a credit check or police check.

You mean like how it usually is? (UK)

None of the places I've rented ever required a credit check. That includes a couple relatively recently when I was briefly nomadic thanks to recession. When I was a landlord for a few years I did not credit check. I've only rented once in the South East, perhaps it's different for letting agencies and landlords down there.

Police check? For what? Only potential employers can ask for a criminal record check, and only some of those are allowed fuller details.

Loans check credit history, for sure, but before loans were pushed credit checks were not a thing. You had to rely on the local bank manager, who would usually try and dissuade you from borrowing too much. Quite the reverse of what we have now.

So perhaps all Western nations are not as far ahead as you appear to believe.

> If this is Orwellian then every western country is already miles ahead of them.

Yes, this is actually how some western countries look like from the outside. Awfully unfree surveillance police countries where people believe they are the most free.

I still prefer to read the actual facts about China and not exaggerations otherwise we look as fools if we debate with false arguments or examples.

This works both ways. Sensationalist reporting shifts the Overton window in the same direction, whether or not the story is actually true. So you may end up with a situation, where a misrepresented party starts embracing bad behaviour faster than they otherwise would, simply because "if everyone already thinks we're the monsters, one extra bad act ain't gonna make a difference".