
China’s Social Credit: Rewards and Punishments - vermilingua
http://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-punishments-and-rewards-explained-2018-4/?r=US&IR=T
======
gruez
>Citizens with low social credit would also be prohibited from enrolling their
children at high-paying private schools

that's the most fucked up part. sure, I can see why you want to punish people
who smoke on train platforms, but punishing children for their parents
misdeeds? how's that even remotely justifiable? would it be justifiable during
a bank robbery hostage situation for the state to take their
kids/spouse/family hostage for leverage?

>Being publicly named as a bad citizen. [...] However, people will be notified
by the courts before they are added to the list, and are allowed to appeal
against the decision within ten days of receiving the notification.

I'm sure that the CCP will provide a fair and impartial trial for those
people.

~~~
fspeech
This one looks a little weird (the original quote is very sketchy with little
detail) so I researched on it a little. If you search for "私立学校 老赖" you can
get a picture of what is going on. You can try Google Translate if you don't
read Chinese.

Laolai 老赖 refers to those who can afford to pay debts but refuse the court
orders to do so. High cost private school tuition is considered luxury
spending. So the ability to afford private school is considered constructive
evidence of ability to pay debt outstanding.

China needs to figure out a personal bankruptcy system. But it also needs to
figure out how to deal with people who hide assets through friends and
relatives.

As it stands I doubt this has much to do with social mobility, as some seem to
be worried about here.

~~~
trendia
According to the linked article, social credit can be moved up or down for
many reasons: "examples infractions include bad driving, smoking in non-
smoking zones, buying too many video games and posting fake news online."

That means that if your social credit goes down for any of these reasons,
which are not all financial, then you can be barred from the best schools.

I think it's far more likely to be used to keep top schools (which feed into
top gov't/industrial positions) clean of any rabble-rousers.

~~~
fspeech
Do you mean that the private schools could use social credit scores to select
students? That is possible, maybe even likely. But one would think or at least
hope that there will be diversity, as some private schools may then cater to
the unmet demands by others. Remember private schools are in the business of
competing for both revenue and talents. A "best" private school that refuses
to accept the best students may soon find that they are no longer the "best"
school anymore.

OP was talking about a government ban. I could only find cases of courts
enforcing civil judgement this way at some cities.

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jknz
Some thought on why an explicit social credit score might be better than the
current system.

The current system already has surveillance. And it's very likely that some
hidden score system is already in place (because surveillance is basically
useless without some kind of data-analaysis/filtering tools, which boils down
to giving scores to people...) So with the current system, you may be denied
government jobs or access to some services based on this hidden scoring system
already in place. You will be denied but without knowing why, with no clues on
how to fix this.

With an explicit social score, contrary to the current system, you see your
score going down whenever you do something that does not please the gov. You
also get an explicit score increase or (whatever reward) if you manage to
change your behavior to please the gov. This makes it possible to understand
why your score might go down and to game the system to bring your score back
to normal. Gaming the system and understanding how to regain access to denied
services is not possible with the (probably) currently implemented hidden
scores.

Of course, I am fully against this type of surveillance and thankful of not
living in such country. But the idea the the new, more explicit social credit
scores will be worse than the current system can be challenged.

~~~
ilkan
Creating an accurate numeric ranking of the tens of thousands of varieties of
criminal, civil, financial, social and etiquette crimes and infractions, which
may or may not be written down, is impossible. If you don't know the
methodology, you can't effectively "game" the system. For example, is spitting
on the sidewalk remedied by volunteering as an unpaid political canvasser for
two months? Or by buying a new car and making the payments on time for at
least year? Are these in different slots? Did a coder forget to test an
expiration date on certain types of demerits? Are others off by a magnitude
factor? You'd never know.

The benefit of a lawful society is that the laws are open source. (Takes a lot
of meetings to get commit privileges, but that's often more of a feature than
a bug)

~~~
sakuronto
Yeah but then you just have these closed-source, buggy, imperfect algorithms
run by private corporations instead. And some of those corporations have
proven themselves to be very incompetent. Maybe if these numbers are fully
gamified in terms of social credit, we would actually have a chance of knowing
how and why the government and corporations are judging us the way they are.
It doesn't sound much worse to the current situation.

------
roenxi
Putting aside the idea that this is a bit creepy by western standards; it
might also be a bad idea more generally.

I'm reminded of Alan Turing; there was a really nice quote by some Briton to
the tune of "If we had known he was gay we might have lost the war". There are
a lot of social norms that simply haven't withstood the test of time. I look
at the 10 Commandments and I think about half of them still hold for me.

Linking social norms, which are significantly arbitrary, to a powerful
surveillance state and enforcement? Ignoring the personal risk the citizens
would face, this might have economic and military consequences to China's
detriment.

~~~
throwaway84742
Western cultures do a variant of the same thing. Your prospective employer
will not only look stuff up about you online (over much of which you have no
control), they will also run a pretty deep background check, and if that
doesn’t work out in your favor your offer can be withdrawn. God forbid if you
had any run-ins with the law, you’re screwed for the rest of your life. Bad
credit rating could disqualify you from a lot of jobs as well.

The major difference is that this is merely enabled by the government, not run
by it.

------
pxeboot
Wasn't there a Black Mirror episode about this? Seems like a terrible idea,
but will inevitably end up being required by many companies, just like credit
scores.

~~~
stuaxo
There are some really nice touches in this episode - everything is beige and
inoffensive, all the cars look the same.

------
prolikewhoa
Looks to be legitimate.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-credit/china-to-
bar...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-credit/china-to-bar-people-
with-bad-social-credit-from-planes-trains-idUSKCN1GS10S)

Unreal. How long until this takes root in the west?

What happens to people who don't use social media, don't necessarily like
being social, and just want to sit at home and play video games or reball some
BGP's? Does this mean they're a bad person?

~~~
whatshisface
Instead of asking if it will ever take root here, maybe it's time to start
talking about how to make sure it never does.

~~~
jadedhacker
Too late. This is just an expansion of the concept of credit scores which
people already find offensive. I agree with you though.

For example, in some states, you can be denied a job based on your credit
score.

[https://www.selflender.com/blog/can-an-employer-not-hire-
me-...](https://www.selflender.com/blog/can-an-employer-not-hire-me-based-on-
my-credit.html)

[http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/04/pf/employer-credit-
checks/in...](http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/04/pf/employer-credit-
checks/index.html)

~~~
whatshisface
Fraud is bad when individuals and corporations do it, but when your government
begins to commit fraud it's a lot worse. It's bad when individuals suppress
ideas, but when the government starts censoring things that the powerful few
find uncomfortable it's a lot worse.

So, with social scores: when corporations organize to share information
against people it's bad, but when the government formalizes, legalizes and
makes mandatory the entire system it's a whole lot worse.

~~~
jadedhacker
I'm inclined to agree with you but consider this alternative point of view.
The credit system in the country is essentially mandatory and fraud isn't
necessary for it to hurt ordinary people. If someone (a poor person!) is
denied a job (with which they hoped to remedy their poverty!) based on the
ordinary operation of the credit system with correct information in it
irrelevant to the position, that's a travesty.

Power and who has it can be more subtle than guns. However, I agree that the
guns add quite a kick. One step deeper though one might interrogate the extent
to which government power is used to support corporations. People get shot and
go to jail over such things.

~~~
whatshisface
The government has a little more than the guns (in the form of the police, the
jails), it also has the ability to force resolutions to prisoner's dilemmas
and tragedies of the commons that are currently working in _our favor._ If
corporations ever cut out a group of people that should actually be served
(for example, denying loans to capable individuals on grounds that have
nothing to do with their financial stability), then there is a Schindler's
list motivation for corporations to "defect" and include the group. Then, the
market dynamics make everyone else a lot worse off unless they also defect.

America already has one experience with a mechanism that can coordinate non-
equilibrium behaviors among companies that would individually benefit from
defecting: racism. Government fiat is another such mechanism, and as far as
the similarities go, it could produce something of the same results. (Groups
cut out of society with nowhere to turn.)

------
pcr0
Meanwhile in Hong Kong, the Chinese national anthem still gets booed every
football match [0]. This will be an interesting reunification to watch.

[0]: [http://scmp.com/sport/hong-kong/article/1901082/hong-kong-
fo...](http://scmp.com/sport/hong-kong/article/1901082/hong-kong-football-
association-fined-again-fifa-booing-china)

------
peter303
The most important point was overlooked in this article: when your credit
score is partly computed from the credit scores of your social links, you tend
to form elitist cliques. People with less wealth or financial skill or
poltical demerits are shunned. They far further behind because they cant make
the better links that they would help them. I hear even family members disavow
each sometimes.

------
fellellor
This is how you brainwash an entire nation. Pavlovian techniques at their
finest on display here. Kudos to China.

------
jknoepfler
I'm so deeply disappointed by the Chinese people right now. Here China has an
opportunity to enter the 21st century as a the world's most rapidly improving
country with the world's biggest economy.

Instead, this is the absolute worst of American-style private contractor
bullshit (private prisons, etc.), rolled up with the absolute worst of
Chinese-style opacity and oppressiveness.

Who on earth would think that a hidden (known to few) objective function for
being a good citizen would help create a better society? Why would anyone
think that the private sector in China is even remotely transparent or
credible enough to hold this kind of responsibility? Who on earth believes
that China has the ability to administer this system with even a modicum of
fairness (that might not be a shared value, to be fair)?

Nothing is black and white on this earth, and I genuinely hope this can work,
but I think it is a transparently awful idea and I am disappointed in any
group of people who would yoke themselves to it.

[edit] It's the worst of neither American private contractor bullshit or
Chinese oppressiveness and opacity, that's a deep dark well that it would be
pretty tough to scrape the bottom of. It's a crude fusion of both, and it's
going to hurt a lot of people in ways little and big, but it isn't the worst
of either.

~~~
duncan_bayne
Keep an eye on that Second Amendment of yours. Odds on anyone wanting to try
something like this would want to disarm you first.

~~~
jknoepfler
I've never really understood liberal opposition to the possession of firearms
in the United States, given the country's founding principles. That said, I'd
be more concerned about the right to vote, the right of the free press, the
10th amendment (which why aren't people more angry about?), the right to
privacy as currently understood by the courts, and the fact that class-action
lawsuits on behalf of people harmed unlawfully by such a system would cripple
any corporate version of it.

I don't really understand the political spectrum in the United States, tbh.
Obviously you need to be willing to take up arms against an oppressive federal
government, should such a thing happen (and who would be deluded enough to
think that a military coup would be categorically impossible in any country -
if not now, what about a century from now?)

~~~
vermilingua
If you can’t fault the US for it’s gun laws based on its founding (which was
violent revolution), then you surely can’t fault China’s human right abuses,
because they are similarly a product of its founding.

~~~
sakuronto
Pardon the ignorance, but how exactly are human rights abuses part of China's
foundation?

