This Is How China Is Going To Control 1.4 Billion People

Robert Foyle Hunwick, The New Republic: How Do You Control 1.4 Billion People?

China's social credit system, which becomes mandatory in 2020, aims to funnel all behavior into a credit score.

A few months ago, you accidentally defaulted on a phone bill. The mistake affects your credit score: It’s hard to get a loan. You can no longer make jokes about Marco Rubio on Twitter; such remarks will algorithmically define you as a libertarian loon—another sort of person likely to default on social obligations. After a couple of close friends miss their student loan repayments, you can’t even travel: your social circle is now all “discredited, unable to take a single step.”

This is the incipient scenario in China, whose state-backed “social credit scheme” will become mandatory for all residents by 2020. The quoted text is from a 2014 State Council resolution which promises that every involuntary participant will be rated according to their “commercial sincerity,” “social security,” “trust breaking” and “judicial credibility.”

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WNU Editor: Two months before the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 I asked a senior official in the Chinese government on what will the Beijing government do to control the protest movement that was growing at the time. His answer .... we will send in the tanks .... which is what they did. Thirty years later .... they control you with your social credit score. Of the two .... because it will be permanent .... the social credit score scares me more than the tanks.