Fair enough, but are we talking credit score or shaming by other users/citizen? Shaming and bullying people who are perceived as having done something wrong on-line is not unheard of in ‘the west’. I suppose it concerns famous people far more than your ordinary social circles, though.

The US has 3 national credit rating agencies.

One big disconnect the US has with China is that it's a putatively communist state running a hypercapitalist economy. So they frequently do capitalist stuff with that scary word "socialism" attached to it. Like introduce a fleet of pilot credit systems and calling it social credit.

Mix this phenomenon with US high school civics class and a few propagandists and you get the American view of "social credit score".