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Comment by function_seven | Hacker News Reader

You're right. Thanks for the detail.

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.

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> 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.

Yeah, and that's fine. Especially for corporations and other fictitious entities. It's the highly personal aspects of this system that disgust me. The personal habits and nickel-and-dime shit that it vacuums up to determine a score.

While not an expert myself, when I have looked deeper into the reporting that makes claims like this, I often find that they're speculating based on one-off statements, not describing an actual extant system. I feel like the US media, even the most respectable publications, don't take appropriate care to separate fact from fiction re: social credit.

For example, I found this article really surprising: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/16/chinas-orwellian-social...

Honest question, isn't this same big data technical effort supporting the round up of Uighurs[1]?

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-...

Rounding up Uyghurs doesn't require fancy big data at all. Everyone's ethnicity is already recorded on their national ID card, and by now that information can be expected to be digitized and easily searchable. To get a phone number, you need to register with your ID, so the government gets location tracking basically for free.

All of that is a completely different technical effort to the credit blacklist discussed here.

Well, what I'm saying is that I'm not certain that the social credit system is actually an effort to surveil and stratify all people in China. My understanding is that, in its current form, it only targets irresponsible business owners.

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.

Yes. It could become Orwellian, and I do see the issue with what a comprehensive surveillance state could become.

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.

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