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Edit: If you'd prefer to remove my original and subsequent comments, I won't object. I can see how it led to a lot of arguments and not a lot else.
It’s no different from a driving test which measures you ability to drive and only affects your eligibility to drive.
We use such specialised tests with clear “passing” conditions that only affect a specific part of our lives all the time.
Social credit systems seem far more far reaching from what I have heard - affects your ability to get loans, buy property, travel, … etc. Your score also depends on pleasing certain people in society rather meeting some objective criteria - reminds me of the Black Mirror episode “Nosedive”.
Don’t think they are really comparable.
That being said, I also think you're not accurately describing social credit or relying entirely on hearsay. For the most part its focused around credit worthiness and financial fraud. I'm not a huge fan of either system, but as somebody who's worked with people harmed by the US private credit system, I can tell you that it's possible to "Nosedive" here and that's not just what I've heard.
Not in the US. It also affects your ability to get housing, to get jobs, and other things.
> Landlords generally look for a credit score of 650 or above to approve a rental application.[1]
[0]https://www.cnbc.com/select/can-employers-see-your-credit-sc...
[1]https://www.apartmentlist.com/renter-life/credit-score-neede...
This is the way the media covered it, but PolyMatter recently did a video that goes a long way toward clarifying what Social Credit means [0]. The short version is that it's a collection of barely-related initiatives and companies responsible for a lot of different things, that in Western eyes all got lumped together into a monolothic version that encompasses every aspect of life.
PolyMatter has a lot of good content on China. They're highly critical of China's policies, but they have a very realistic perspective on China's quite limited capabilities as an enormous, diverse, authoritarian state. My main takeaway from their China content is that China's ability to micromanage is dramatically overestimated in Western pop culture. Not that their regime is less oppressive than we think, just vastly less competent.
Welding doors of apartments where a few people test positive for COVID? Housing a male of the ethnic majority in a minority family and forcing the minority women to sleep with the men while their husbands are in Concentrtion camps? Organ harvesting of political prisoners?
I don't think the US does "privatized" versions of these things.
I did not say that every feature of society is perfectly replicated, nor have I studied both of them well enough to know if they are perfectly analogous. I'm sure some societies showcase their own idiosyncratic injustices. For instance, I'm not aware of for-profit prisons in China.
What charges on similar scales and severity would these harassed Chinese be accused of?
The US will harass you, but publicly and legally. If you're a media person, you won't get access to the money-making Americans corps. They'll cancel your visa, and harass anyone with your namesake at a border crossing.
The harassment from the CCP is continuous and affects a large number of people. Just because 1 side does bad things, doesn't mean they can't moralize the bigger culprit.
( I do find comments on the morals of war to be a bit rich coming from Americans)
"According to former intelligence officials, in the wake of the Vault 7 leaks, the CIA talked about kidnapping Assange from Ecuador's London embassy, and some senior officials discussed his potential assassination."
Over 600 assassination attempts against Fidel Castro alone for the crime of not kowtowing to all US demands (Fidel originally tried to ally with US not the Soviet Union, but was rebuffed by the US because redistributing foreign owned/stolen land was central to Fidel's central policy of lifting ordinary Cuban's out of poverty); also, since the Spanish-American war, the US viewed Cuba as something of a colony, and was unwilling to treat it as a peer.
More apropos, the US also kept "accidentally" bombing Al Jazeera newsrooms during the US unprovoked war of aggression in Iraq. Coincidentally, Al Jazeera were some of the only reporters who went independently into the field to report on US war crimes. The US was given the coordinates of the Al Jazeera Offices, so the US knew what they were bombing (each of multiple times).
I was subjected to the same bullshit K-12 hero worship "history" lessons and other US propaganda as I suspect you were/are. As a child we moved to a country where the US overthrew the democratically elected government and installed a far-right brutal murderous dictatorship (in support of a US corporation's rape of the country). This led to civil war (which I experienced first-hand; the US providing support to the oppressive government regime during the decades long war). We moved back to the US before the genocide began (the US providing support; Ronald Regan even personally meeting with the General primarily responsible for executing the genocide). This experience forced me to confront the lies we are told in the US.
Do what you want, but I'd suggest reading university level historical accounts (even those published in the US), they are much more accurate with far less/no hero worship. Also, listening/reading to foreign news sources is useful to help break through the propaganda our corporate news sources feed us here. The process is similar to being de-programmed from a cult, and the ultra patriots chanting, "USA, USA, USA..." have drank the Kool-Aid.
Good luck!
A better example would have been like dole wars, or maybe tacit support of pinochet but that's kinda dated and the US is definitely trending towards less of that shit.
If china's like "well the US did it so it should be ok for us", the correct response is: yeah, so? Be better.
But that is the purpose of that accusation - to inhibit self-defense through demoralization. Arguing that no, you're virtuous enough to deserve safety, is already falling into that trap. They're not coming to exact a just punishment.
> Tankie is a pejorative label for communists, particularly Stalinists, who support the authoritarian tendencies of Marxism–Leninism or, more generally, authoritarian states associated with Marxism–Leninism, whether contemporary or historical. [...]
> The term "tankie" was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to crush the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring uprising, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions
I'd say rolling tanks OVER your own people to put them into submission is similar enough.
I've never seen it used this way. What I've seen is the term being used to describe leftist authoritarianism, usually by other leftists.
These are not exclusive! My point was that it's used broadly, and is thus not inherently pejorative -- I've leftists use it both pejoratively and non-pejoratively.
I’m only really familiar with it as a term used by democratic socialists for Stalinists, and occasionally Maoists.
(I wouldn’t have thought actual tankies would be too thrilled with the current Chinese regime, anyway.)
(I'm not a tankie and far be it from me to gatekeep who gets called it, but my understanding matches yours re: the Chinese regime.)
It’s used to describe people who support authoritarian left
Honestly even this is wrong, it’s more authoritarian anti-US as they support Putin
Every one of them wouldn't think twice if a US Green Card magically appeared in front of them.
This is used constantly here as well. When I ask for evidence I'm naive, stupid, etc.
"If the US' worst is your best, what's your point!?"
This seems unlikely, as we all know that the more education a person receives, the more informed they are, the more capable of rational assessment of the world around them.
I don't know how to say this without sounding glib, but I honestly cannot tell if your comment is sarcasm. Poe's law [1] applies.
There are tons of college-educated people who are utterly incapable of critical thinking. They parrot what their radical professors told them. They don't know anything about statistics or philosophy or how to rationally criticize an argument. They just repeat talking anti-Western talking points. For them, the grass is greener on the other side of the world. They've never actually tried to live there, let alone talk to people from the authoritarian countries they idolize.
"Why are people fleeing from your alleged paradise to an alleged criminal state? Why not the other way around? Get back to me when large numbers of Americans are fleeing to China to escape tyranny at home, search for new and better opportunities, etc."
This is actually happening here in the states:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/06/19/transg...
Depending on how the next few elections swing these families might not be safe anywhere in the continental US. They wouldn't be any safer in China, but this kind of tyranny can and does happen here at home.
In fact there may be a slightly negative correlation because some experts spend so much time on their pet-topic that they end up rationalizing why their preferred evidence is better than the contradicting evidence (basically boosted confirmation bias)
Bit like the cliche joke about HN: Computer science makes people think they are an expert in all fields. Only without the civility.
Of course China does spook shit. What are they supposed to do: refuse to do intelligence out of some misguided sense of morality so the CIA has free rein to do whatever they want, wherever they want, whenever they want? You might as well just assert that China's bad because they refuse to get owned by US intelligence - it's an equivalent sentiment.
Only after Deng's market based reforms in the 1980s.
What do you have to say for their campaign of ethnic cleansing?
I'm surprised it worked, in the sense that they were able to harness market economics and capital accumulation without turning into a capitalist dictatorship like happened in the West. Even with the benefit of hindsight, I'm not sure how they managed to avoid that (there is still time for it to happen though!) but I'm happy for their success.
> What do you have to say for their campaign of ethnic cleansing?
Pretty much what most of the rest of the world has to say about it, I suppose.
> Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, accused the Justice Department on Friday of “slanders and smears,” adding that transnational repression “is an allegation that best matches the U.S.’s own practices.”
Looks like the official response from the Chinese government is whataboutism.
Why not?
The game doesn’t end. There’s no table to leave. Everything you have is always up for grabs. Not playing is just forfeiting.
Your comment would have been much better without the first and last sentences.
China is "winning" and will continue to win, not because they are more virtuous, but because they can move on to the next thing while we're stuck with end-stage capitalism and all the rentierism that comes with it, apparently forever.