Millions of Chinese individuals and businesses have been labelled as untrustworthy on an official blacklist banning them from any number of activities, including accessing financial markets or traveling by air or train, as the use of the government’s social credit system accelerates.
[...] Over 3.59 million Chinese enterprises were added to the official creditworthiness blacklist last year, banning them from a series of activities, including bidding on projects, accessing security markets, taking part in land auctions and issuing corporate bonds, according to the 2018 annual report released by the National Public Credit Information Center.
[...] According to the report, the authorities collected over 14.21 million pieces of information on the “untrustworthy conduct” of individuals and businesses, including charges of swindling customers, failing to repay loans, illegal fund collection, false and misleading advertising, as well as uncivilized behavior such as taking reserved seats on trains or causing trouble in hospitals.
About 17.46 million “discredited” people were restricted from buying plane tickets and 5.47 million were restricted from purchasing high-speed train tickets, the report said.
I, for one, welcome our new, well-behaved party overlords.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @08:59AM (1 child)
Terrorists! Welcome to China!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @02:19PM
They are terrorists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @09:07AM (1 child)
is it 3e9 people over there?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @09:57AM
yes. three billion people live in China, if you ignore the tibetan monks and yeti populations.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Captival on Friday February 22 2019, @10:00AM (14 children)
How are they supposed to improve their status without access to public transportation or being able to invest what they earn
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @10:33AM (2 children)
First world problem...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @10:53AM (1 child)
Second world problem
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday February 22 2019, @04:21PM
Third world problem, too. The investments just tend to be more along the lines of basic needs.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by pkrasimirov on Friday February 22 2019, @01:45PM (1 child)
> How are they supposed to improve their status
You are deeply mistaken here. They are supposed to suffer and serve as warning to the others. There is no "reset my spec" button / NPC there.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Saturday February 23 2019, @12:22AM
Those commies are so much like US...
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday February 22 2019, @01:57PM (7 children)
Well, there's another way to look at this, the US has a prison population of 2.2 million, or 1/159 - so, this "social discredit" system in China affects about 1/79 Chinese, or roughly twice as many per-capita, but... much more efficiently than housing, feeding and guarding them. These discredited Chinese have far more freedom than the US prisoners. Yes, China also keeps prisoners, but only ~1.6 million, or 1/860.
Then we can talk about the 4.5 million in the US who are on parole.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday February 22 2019, @02:15PM (1 child)
That China talks about. Who knows how many people they keep that they don't talk about.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @10:00PM
and does that include the Falun Gong they harvest for their organs
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @02:55PM (1 child)
And how many are on the US no fly list, with no judicial oversight?
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Friday February 22 2019, @03:37PM
I could tell you, but you'll have to meet me in Gitmo first...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @11:24PM (2 children)
But normalize the data by removing African Americans and you'll find the Chinese incarceration rate is about 25x the American rate.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Saturday February 23 2019, @12:25AM (1 child)
I know this decade has looked a lot like the 30s, but I didn't realize we had gotten to the point of normalizing a situation by removing millions of people yet.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday February 23 2019, @03:51AM
Also, no need to feed the trolls - a Chinese imprisonment rate 25x the rate of non-African American imprisonment would imply only 1/21,000 non-African Americans are imprisoned, or a total of less than 15,000 non-African Americans imprisoned. I believe Florida alone exceeds that number.
Sure, old white guys run the courts, the prisons, and most of the police, sure African Americans end up on the wrong side of old white guys' laws more often than white people do. It's bad and it needs to improve. But, it has improved dramatically in the last 100 years, and continues to do so - with the occasional orange taint throwing a minority nostalgia fueled setback.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday February 22 2019, @04:39PM
I think they are supposed to die in poverty. This method is supposed to generate less outrage than executions.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @10:58AM (4 children)
I guess “uncivilized behavior” includes saying things the government doesn't like?
(Score: 5, Touché) by Spamalope on Friday February 22 2019, @11:05AM (2 children)
Mentioning Tienanmen square, not having HAN ancestry - any number of offenses...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @03:35PM (1 child)
Being a movie star with millions in the bank...
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Saturday February 23 2019, @12:29AM
Talking about Winnie the Pooh.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 23 2019, @02:06AM
Expats are very familiar with this, it was the slogan for the district most foreigners lived in:
“Civilized Chaoyang, Magnificent With Me”, with the cutest little mascot to go with it:
https://yourenotfromaroundhere.com/blog/getting-tired-of-being-civilised-beijing-china/ [yourenotfromaroundhere.com]
(Score: 2) by SemperOSS on Friday February 22 2019, @11:52AM (1 child)
I am glad I travelled to China before this was implemented or I had probably never been allowed to return home.
I don't need a signature to draw attention to myself.
Maybe I should add a sarcasm warning now and again?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 24 2019, @10:52AM
Funny, that's exactly why I would never go to USA. I only go to countries I'm certain I'm allowed to leave. So.. I'm going back to the basement now. Bye!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @01:09PM (1 child)
A simple solution to this would be to start a ride hailing app for banned travelers. This "WeBanU" app would actually be funded and controlled by the government, and would track these social-credit bankrupt individuals even more. Ahh, oppression, how you foster ingenuity.
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Friday February 22 2019, @01:41PM
If the app does not obey the overlords its users go to jail, no score needed. People have very limited desire for ingenuity once there.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday February 22 2019, @01:20PM (4 children)
There has been a few articles now on their social score system. But they are somehow light on one aspect of it. How do you improve your score if you are found unworthy? Is there some kind of system decay as in your bad behavior diminishes over time if you don't repeat offend?
So I guess that sort of fixes it or? But wouldn't you still then be marked down as someone that doesn't pay their debts in time? As noted in the article it seems that some people might be eternally locked in a bad score due to poverty.
Also how does the system interact with foreigners? Are we at the top or the bottom of the list when it comes to buying train tickets and such or are we some sort of special class. I guess it's the last, we are probably under more or less constant watch, after all even their AI should be able to pick out a white face among the millions of yellow once.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday February 22 2019, @01:59PM
Pretty much the same way you get off SSI and SNAP in the US - stop being you, do better, figure it out, most other people can do it you just need to try harder, or hurry up and die already - preferably out of sight, it's such a downer seeing or talking about "those people." /s
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday February 22 2019, @02:08PM (1 child)
by engaging in a public struggle session (pīdòu) in which the individual admits to their crimes and engages in prolonged self-criticism until they see the error of their ways and rehabilitate themselves, pledging eternal allegiance to Chairman Mao.
Hang on a sec...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @03:42PM
Public struggle session? Admits their crimes? Prolonged self criticism [jaynestars.com]? Who would do such a thing [cosmopolitan.com]?
You talk like it is the case that people will just indulge in self conflagration themselves in online posts and hand over all of the their wealth and assets to the chinese government based purely on accusations without even bothering to try to defend themselves in a court of law.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday February 22 2019, @09:45PM
No way! Who doesn't love a redemption story? I bet people would like them even more.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pkrasimirov on Friday February 22 2019, @02:07PM (1 child)
Reading the comments I see people really have no idea how the terror in totalitarian system works. During communism there was no "social score" or such thing, people were sent directly to death camps if someone too "proactive" heard them say a thing they didn't like. Also it was very, very important if you were of the right ancestry, only at that time it was not HAN but The Party HQ. If you were one of the "leaders" then you could even kill people and don't even have to bother to care for it. Actually it was kind of expected to do it so being sociopathic was a minimum requirement.
This system is dreadful because it hits everywhere (thanks to the 21 century communications), not only in schools and workplaces. I mean before the "untrustworthy" could not enroll to Uni or work any white-collar work, now they cannot even buy a train ticket. And the "AI-enhanced" list makes for really, really inhumane criteria and selection. "Bad credit" they say, "fake advertisment" they say but with the absence of independent justice any number of bad-sounding claims can stick around. Have you ever heard of the crime "being enemy of the people" and "being counter-revolutionary"? I mean it is even worded to sound as if you have no chance, you "be", you "are" something, therefore you cannot help it. It didn't say you "did" something but you "are". That is also a mighty blow on the sanity and even if some people survivied the camps they never felt their life back.
It's terror and horror, and all totalitarian systems root their foundations on it. It starts with widely accepted small pieces of "compromises" in the name of security/children/anything and it's only downhill from there. What's wrong in barring cons from fast trains, right? Yeah, let's replace our entire judgement systems with "social systems". That will save soo much money for sure, right? Not to pay to all these judges, lawyers etc. Just sweet AI.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @10:47PM
No that's also how it works in the modern free world and probably did in the past.
The difference is that we have a bunch of checks and balances so there is a small chance that your paragovernmental good ole boys network could possibly end up picking a fight it doesn't win if you're sloppy with your warlording then the whole fiefdom will come crashing down.
China's communist government is based on it's old monarchy so unlike in the us each government beaurocrat considers themselves to be some sort of tiny king (Where the same job in the us would be considered a shitty gov job that people only work for the pension and health insurance program). Also there is a defined hierarchy so america for example, could fill the executive branch with deformed monkeys and the rest of the government would keep things from falling apart.
In China if the communist party slips up and puts an idiot in charge there will be almost nothing they can do to rectify the situation. As a matter of fact at that point holding on to power and ruling with an iron fist becomes a matter of survival for any leader in such a situation.
>Not to pay to all these judges, lawyers etc. Just sweet AI.
Oh come now I don't want to be like China but let's not pretend that the legal system delivers justice here. The legal system delivers punishment on behalf of those who can afford the legal resources to make it move. I engage the law when I think people are dicking me around but last time I did I felt filthy as my attorney delivered a bullshit ADA complaint to my property manager... not because of a legitimate disability but because the penalty of losing would have wiped out the entire LLC and he knew their lawyers could deal with tenant laws if I complained that they were out of compliance fixing my shower on time and then I'd have to deal with their retribution. So they shut the fuck up and fixed my shower even though their preferred plumber was "booked" and now they can't wait for me to leave before they fuck up and I terrorize them again. If I had proper justice they wouldn't have been scared enough to follow the law and not cause problems for me over it later.
So that's justice in america... a able bodied man abuses law meant to protect the disabled because his landlord isn't afraid of breaking rental laws. Was I in the right? Yes I need a fucking working shower and the law says so. Is that what the ADA is meant to provide? Was justice delivered? No it was just my lawyer being a bully he would have probably threatened the guy's children if he thought he could get away with it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edinlinux on Friday February 22 2019, @02:20PM (1 child)
China 'Social Credit' is essentially a social platform, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit.. this naturally can grow to be global.
A Chinese company now owns a reasonable chunk of reddit. Install it there to get natural 'upmods' or 'downmods'. Use Aliexpress for purchasing? get lower prices if you are seen favorable with the Chinese govt (i.e. no anti China posts on reddit). Travelling through Asia? your transit is likely to be through Shanghai or Beijing.. criticized China on the 'Green Site'? Oh, no flight for you..
Give a favor to a Chinese company or govt trying to enter your industry, or get a sale..'+' credit for you.. Refuse? then '-' credit for you..
As Chinese economic power grows further outside of China (and they are very good at playing this long term game), you can see China's social credit impact non Chinese people outside of China more... just you wait.. :-)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Friday February 22 2019, @03:55PM
It's probably far more likely that the Chinese will implement this with more similarly minded governments and countries first. Perhaps the friendly or cooperative countries like those in BRIC:s. Friendly nations such as Pakistan, North Kora and Iran. Alternatively China makes it part of their global trade deals with all those nations in Africa they are trying to gobble up as part of the resource extraction deals or being part of their new "Silk Road". I think those would be far more likely candidates then EU/USA/JAPAN etc, not to say that those won't just create a similar system eventually if this turns out to be some kind of great success, after all nothing is better then a good old panopticon-like system where you have the prisoners/population monitor themselves as a result of some potential real or imagined monitoring.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Sulla on Friday February 22 2019, @03:06PM
动态网自由门 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Free Tibet 六四天安門事件 The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 天安門大屠殺 The Tiananmen Square Massacre 反右派鬥爭 The Anti-Rightist Struggle 大躍進政策 The Great Leap Forward 文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution 人權 Human Rights 民運 Democratization 自由 Freedom 獨立 Independence 多黨制 Multi-party system 台灣 臺灣 Taiwan Formosa 中華民國 Republic of China 西藏 土伯特 唐古特 Tibet 達賴喇嘛 Dalai Lama 法輪功 Falun Dafa 新疆維吾爾自治區 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region 諾貝爾和平獎 Nobel Peace Prize 劉暁波 Liu Xiaobo 民主 言論 思想 反共 反革命 抗議 運動 騷亂 暴亂 騷擾 擾亂 抗暴 平反 維權 示威游行 李洪志 法輪大法 大法弟子 強制斷種 強制堕胎 民族淨化 人體實驗 肅清 胡耀邦 趙紫陽 魏京生 王丹 還政於民 和平演變 激流中國 北京之春 大紀元時報 九評論共産黨 獨裁 專制 壓制 統一 監視 鎮壓 迫害 侵略 掠奪 破壞 拷問 屠殺 活摘器官 誘拐 買賣人口 遊進 走私 毒品 賣淫 春畫 賭博 六合彩 天安門 天安门 法輪功 李洪志 Winnie the Pooh 劉曉波动态网自由门CCPCorruption
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @05:06PM
Sci-fi becomes reality at an ever quickening pace
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=epI5r0_T_lE [youtube.com]
The Orville did an episode as well in season 1
https://orville.fandom.com/wiki/Majority_Rule [fandom.com]