This system seems inhumane. I’ll consider supporting a boycott of China if it would help.
"owing" money means you borrow from secondary lender, using it to buy risky assets. you essentially played with fire and got burned. lots of cases like this where these "businessmen" loses money and then declared bankruptcy, refusing to pay anyone back.
sounds a lot like wallstreet doesn't it? are you okay with what they did?
this is government way saying enough is enough.
You can be put on the list for all sorts of things...
“examples of infractions include bad driving, smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games and posting fake news online.”
Getting put on the list is a punishment that can be ordered by a court for various infractions, but not buying video games, because (unlike the other three) it is merely frowned upon, but not illegal. Discouraging video games was part of one companies' private implementation of a "social credit system". The list is another "social credit system". Various local governments within China are also running their own pilots.
Those systems are not connected yet. It is expected that eventually the Chinese government will decide on one implementation by selecting parts of the pilot projects, but it isn't clear which parts. Until that happens, buying too many video games isn't going to ban you from taking high-speed rail.
1. If a lender lends me money, they're shouldering the risk that I may not repay the loan. That risk should be priced appropriately.
2. Bankruptcy is a valid concept.
3. What Wall Street did was misjudge the risk of their products (whether intentionally or not). Sounds like what the lenders in your example are doing.
But the government is punishing the risk-takers. Not sure that's a good way to promote entrepreneurship or innovation. The bankruptcy alone should serve as the deterrent (and signal to future lenders)
Here's a personal example, my parents bought a condo in China in a new development area, searched around for renovators and found this shop close by that seemed fairly legit. A show room, full staff, decent looking portfolio, sales people looked legit and they had legit looking supply chain relationship as well.
My parents worked out a project scope and plan, estimated the cost, put down 25% for down payment. The shop came in, did a month of work and then disappeared. Job was half done. what happened? They went "bankrupt".
Are the shop owners risk takers? Maybe. Did they really try to start a business? Honestly they probably saw an opportunity where a new development area was coming up and came in for the quick buck. Borrowed some money, set up shop to a decent level and then disappear.
This isn't an isolated case, lots of examples exist. Am I saying this is the case for everyone? No. But its gotten bad enough that the government had to do something about it. Is it my parents fault for not doing more due diligence? Probably. But it's really really tiresome if you had to do this every. single. time. for everything.
As far as I know, (and correct me if I'm wrong), China didn't have a credit score system as developed as what we're used to in the US (i.e. Equifax, TransUnion, etc.)
But what the social credit system represents is a leapfrog over that to something much more invasive and ubiquitous. I don't want to know if my contractor once smoked in a no-smoking area, of if they buy too many video games. But I do want to be able to check their contractor's license and make sure there aren't complaints.
Some of the pilot projects are intended to work more like that. For example, if you wanted to confirm that "Wenzhou Overseas Travel Ltd." is legit, you could check Wenzhou's portal and search for the name. https://wzcredit.gov.cn/creditSearch/getCompanyDetailInfo.ht...
Then you can see some basic information about the company (legal representative Chen Lili, services offered, address, registered capital of 10 million Yuan, founded in 1998...) and then a bunch of information that's supposed to help evaluate their creditworthiness or look them up in other systems. The section for negative information (underlined in orange) is empty. The most recent data is from 2017, though, so who knows whether the system is even updated anymore.
For example, I found this article really surprising: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/16/chinas-orwellian-social...
I get that the main story is about a debtor and credit, but the concept of stratification based on surveilence-data is word-for-word 1984.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/muslims-...
All of that is a completely different technical effort to the credit blacklist discussed here.
The Uighur roundup - that just sounds like standard colonialist violence to me. I don't see how it's specifically a 'big data' issue, nor how it's related to social credit.
Either way, China faces a very unique situation, but I do see overall improvement in living condition. I don't live there full time but visit often, I'd say the biggest challenge coming up will be dealing with the aging population (and their needs), the shrinking work force, and decrease in consumer confidence. The post-boomer generation did VERY well for themselves but I can't say the same for the millennials and beyond.
I'm sure the CCP would love to use social credit as another tool of repression, but for now they're having enough trouble getting a normal credit reporting system going.
And as horrible as I think the social credit system is, there's an interesting question, as people who don't live in China, what business it is of ours (except, perhaps, as a cautionary tale)?
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
If we allow this to become normal, we'll regret it.
In general we ought to try to change things we don’t like. I can’t imagine the people of China like this system do they?
Not considering politics for a second, I just couldn't imagine the impact of an Equifax like event with that amount of information.
Presumably a system that promotes good behavior is well liked by people who haven't run afoul of it. And of course, via censorship practices, a very small percentage of Chinese citizens are aware of a lot of reasons they should be concerned about their government.
Russian citizens are also wildly enthusiastic about Vladimir Putin. It's not a safe assumption that people living in countries with authoritarian leaders disapprove of them.
Also see Hitler's popular approval ratings [0] (Godwin's law notwithstanding). In August 1934, roughly 90% of German voters were in favor of the consolidation of the offices of President and Chancellor into a single Leader-Chancellor in the person of Adolf Hitler. Note that number should be taken with a big grain of salt, since there was tremendous social and political pressure to vote that way -- and a threat of repercussions for voting "no".
[0] https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/learning/general...
In all Bavaria Chancellor Hitler received the largest vote in his favor in the concentration camp at Dachau where 1,554 persons voted "Yes" and only eight "No" and there were only ten spoiled ballots.
As far as I'm aware, that's a bit out of date. It also, I believe, comes from a misconception concerning human nature, namely that popularity is uni-dimensional. Which is to say, Russians who believe Putin is a superb leader in foreign affairs, great at making Russia seem big and scary to the rest of the world, may also think Putin is an ineffectual corrupt thug when it comes to domestic affairs.
When high popularity ratings are attributed to Putin, the surveys ask a wide variety of questions:
> How do you feel about how Putin is handling foreign conflicts?
> How do you feel about how Putin is handling the economy?
> How do you feel about how Putin is handling the drug epidemic?
> How do you feel about how Putin is handling corruption and law enforcement?
Approval for Putin varies GREATLY between questions like that. When it comes time to make a headline, whichever measure is chosen depends on which bolsters the story. If the story is that Putin is highly effective at manipulating his population, then the dimension across which he's the most popular is chosen for the headline. If the story is that Putin's power in Russia is faltering, then a different dimension is picked for the headline.
It's not lying per se, but it's very similar to a form of p-hacking. Picking which result to report and ignoring the others is a trick used often in the media and academia.
Here is an article that supports what I'm asserting: https://www.pewglobal.org/2017/06/20/president-putin-russian...
See the nice little table at the bottom that breaks out Putin's approval rating on different issues. In 2015, 83% approved of the way he was handling Ukraine. This dropped to 63% by the spring of 2017. And by the spring of 2017, approval for how Putin is handling corruption is already below 49%. From this we can see there are Russians who approve of Putin's treatment of Ukraine who still think Putin is corrupt.
(That link is page two of the article, which I think is generally interesting and worth giving a read: https://www.pewglobal.org/2017/06/20/russians-remain-confide... )
> Presumably a system that promotes good behavior is well liked by people who haven't run afoul of it. And of course, via censorship practices, a very small percentage of Chinese citizens are aware of a lot of reasons they should be concerned about their government.
For that reason, I think it's important to take such public-opinion data with a grain of salt. You have to wait until people have enough direct contact with the system in question so they can form an informed opinion of it.
Remember the US still has the largest surveillance apparatus in the world. All they would need to do to implement a social credit system is to flip a couple of switches.
It's widely known that american companies have this capability but don't really know the details...
For example: see the "unbanked". Rather than fixing the banking system so that basic transactions do not rely on credit, it's easier to create a whole class of people that the industry tells to get lost.
"O there just been a mistake at the bank" goes to "they are racially profiling me" very quickly. These very same programs target political activists.
Also it doesn't help that there are decentralized alternative popping up everywhere. If monero(crypto coin) ever became mainstream, the world would be a very different place.
This doesn't seem that easy - after all, most products in western super markets are made in China. Maybe people can stop traveling to China, but that wouldn't make a difference big enough for the Chinese ruling class to care.
But why restrict this question to China (though this particular article is about China)? Why not Saudi Arabia, for example?
as people who don't live in China, what business it is of ours
Because, if this works, other governments will follow, in no time and likely with Chinese government help. They will "learn" from Chinese government's "experience". Even if you didn't care about the plight of Chinese people, you'd surely care about your own countrymen's freedom? Tech surveillance is more dangerous than anything, because it is easier and cheaper to implement and it can scale, compared to any other system.
That is most definitely not the case, almost all of our groceries and soft goods (that supermarkets sell) come from domestic or nearby foreign sources. Perhaps you meant hypermarkets or discount department stores like Walmart?
China has millions of minorities in detention centers with some highly questionable things happening to those people. If you believe in justice and human rights, it is everyone's business what happens there.
If you are looking for inhumane behaviors upon which to base a boycott of China, there are several better choices.
They are both systems designed by the elites to shape the behavior of commoners.
Why do I have to regularly use a credit card to prove that I am credit worthy, so that I can get a bank loan to buy a house?
Whereas you taking a high speed train is not a risk, so blocking that is just punishment.
I have not heard of the expiration of offences in this system. This social credit system is new an may evolve with time.
It's like being 20 years old and creating a new startup then wondering why investors don't want to give you any money so you can hire out staff and build a product.
It's not inherently impossible to get a loan with no credit history, just really difficult to do without something else to inspire confidence.
And frankly, considering how easy it is for any Joe to build a decent credit history from just using credit cards I'd say most lenders are actually doing consumers a favor by lending them such vast amounts of money on such a basic premise. I know if it were my money I'd be way more conservative.
Also in America your credit score won't affect you from buying things like a plane ticket or even leaving the country. It only affects your line of credit (money borrowed). I'm not convinced the government should be telling you how to spend your money (but that's clearly an opinion).
There's also a lot (A LOT) wrong with the credit system, like the fact that a significant number of Americans (numbers vary from 5% to 25%) have significant errors by one of the 3 major credit agencies. Equifax... I'm not convinced China could do substantially better than us (especially when you add more factors). Even if you reduce that number to 1/1000 (I doubt that good considering other database error levels), that still seems like a big deal if it prevents you from mundane events like taking a train or plane. I wouldn't look at a system that doesn't look good and say "Hey, we should do this, but with more consequences when it fails."