
The worrying implications of China's social-credit project - nabla9
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21711902-worrying-implications-its-social-credit-project-china-invents-digital-totalitarian
======
caseysoftware
> _By 2020, Chinese officials say, it will “allow the trustworthy to roam
> everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a
> single step.”_

I think that line says it all.

And before you say, "this will only apply to bad people!" check out the next
paragraph:

> _The project is a response to the party’s biggest problems: the collapse of
> confidence in public institutions, and the need to keep track of the
> changing views and interests of China’s population (without letting them
> vote). It seeks to collect information on the honesty of ordinary citizens,
> public officials and companies alike._

In the US, ex-convicts have major problems starting over and getting on their
feet but this is a whole other level. This is punishing/excluding people
solely based on their opinion, _not_ based on actions or crimes committed.

No wait, disagreeing is the crime.

~~~
chrischen
China has a pretty big problem of corruption and in general people doing bad
things (with the smallest being line cutting). Probably why they're resorting
to such drastic measures, and obviously such measures will be abused or have
side effects of being used to silence dissenters.

~~~
woodandsteel
Experts who study corruption say it can exist on a large scale only if those
at the top of the government give permission to those under them to take
bribes and engage in other criminal practices like pocketing the funds their
departments are supposed to be spending.

What is going on is a system where the lower-downs (including the military and
police) support the government, and in exchange the government allows them to
use their official positions to enrich themselves. The higher-ups do this
because they know the public is not behind them, so they need to have a paid-
off security apparatus that will suppress the public if it revolts.

Keep this in mind anytime a leader in a country with a high rate of corruption
says he sincerely wants to clean things up, but those lower down are stopping
him from doing so. He is just plain telling a lie. And anyone who says they
believe him is either naive or also telling a lie.

By the way, if you want to know how clean or corrupt a particular nation is, a
good place to start is transparency.org

~~~
kahrkunne
>Keep this in mind anytime a leader in a country with a high rate of
corruption says he sincerely wants to clean things up, but those lower down
are stopping him from doing so. He is just plain telling a lie.

Doesn't this kind of contradict what you said before, though? The leader needs
to allow corruption lest he is overthrown (usually by those lower down such as
the military, _not_ the public), so in essence those lower down _are_
preventing him from cleaning up.

There really is no winning here - being a leader means pandering to the people
below you, because if you don't they can just get rid of you. In a democracy
this problem is partly solved by switching leaders often and dividing the
power of the underlings over the entire population, but the dynamic still very
much exists. And of course, in a country with no democracy it's many times
worse (and very difficult to establish a democracy).

Don't automatically assume that dictators always have bad intentions - they
are trapped in a system too.

Of course that doesn't mean that China isn't doing a bad thing here, I was
just speaking generally.

~~~
woodandsteel
Yes, you are quite right that the dictator is trapped by the system, and I
should have explained that.

But the dictator still lies, because he doesn't explain the system, but
instead falsely tells the public he really is trying to eliminate corruption
and that those below him are simply refusing to follow his orders. That is
what Putin, for instance, is saying.

As for China, this has been the system for a long time. Xi Jinping says he is
trying to fix it, and seems to be making some progress, but I not sure how
things are going to go in the long term. My impression is that clean
government usually requires a strong civil society that supports it, and in
China that is resisted as threatening the central authoritarian government.

------
Manglano
The institution of "Social Credit" could easily become an apparatus of social
coercion indistinguishable from the Truck Token systems.

An individual not behaving according to the interests of the group would face
starvation and homelessness for not adhering to certain social norms. It would
be trivial to enforce beliefs (no matter how odd or antihuman) through this
apparatus. Under a currency system driven by public opinion, survival becomes
a matter of "Obey or Die."

In such a system, existence is analogous to slavery.

This is not an advocation for lawlessness, but rather for the continued use of
currency and the independence of the financial organ from the whims of human
opinion. The human mind is subject to ongoing cognitive and social distortion.
Currency independent of these factors is a mitigating measure against human
cruelty.

A strong social benefit system and the show of empathy in which one is
anchored is a stronger mitigation against antisocial behaviour than the Social
Credit concept.

~~~
Barrin92
Slavery is the rule of one group, usually ethnic over another. China's digital
legalism here has very little to do with it, as it genuinely applies to
everybody equally. This is a thousands of years old doctrine that goes through
Chinese history. It's not the individual that is the frame of reference,but
the collective and the belief is that good behaviour should be rewarded by a
strong state and bad behaviour punished. This is in many ways more impartial
than moving morality into the cultural or social sphere, where it is subject
to identity and economical interests and so on.

You can criticise it of course, it is coercive but it is definitely not
slavery, it's the stark opposite. Slavery was moving fundamentally ethical
concerns into the private, people were turned into property. The Chinese
system moves fundamentally ethical questions into the public legal system.
Bureaucracy has one big advantage, it subjugates everybody, powerful or weak
alike to the same rules. No bureaucratic system can be maintained if it
exercises gross violations of this principle because that's the thing it has
going for it. The CPC is acutely aware of this. There is of course practical
corruption but never to the degree that it undermines the system.

~~~
nercht12
He said existence is analogous, not "is". It's a matter of feeling by the
person. While their every move isn't dictated - because it's impossible to
enforce at such a scale - the parallels to slavery are there.

>> Bureaucracy has one big advantage, it subjugates everybody, powerful or
weak alike to the same rules.

I'm fairly confident some small party at the top runs the show and everyone
else is a subject. Every non-democratic government boils down to being an
oligarchy, and those at the very top usually have the most freedom.

------
siliconc0w
What will be interesting is when it becomes clear to china banks that the
'social score' is a poor metric for credit worthiness. My bet is that they
will quickly and quietly go back to weighting FICO-style metrics (i.e history
of repayment).

~~~
mattnewton
Will they? I think that social capital will be worth more than the money
because it's what keeps the men-with-guns on your side. If they are serious
about making it hard for the "discredited to take a single step" then how
angry the government is at you is a good predictor of you ability to pay. If
you are talking about the incentive for a bank to defect and lend to people
who could repay but have a poor score, that would be very interesting, but I
am not sure I see how likely that is to be a real arbitrage opportunity if
everyone else is on the same page as the government re: the score.

~~~
zhemao
Well all the banks are state-owned, so it's kind of a moot point. They'll go
along with whatever the government decides.

~~~
candiodari
Until it requires a denial of reality so great that it simply can't work. That
usually doesn't take more than a decade or so.

------
Animats
The US is headed for a similar system:

\- Class A : US citizen, registered voter, passed scrutiny level for Global
Entry, gun license, or security clearance. Gets to use fast lane at airport
security. Eligible for national security related jobs.

\- Class B: US citizen, registered voter, not approved for Global Entry or gun
license. Gets to vote.

\- Class C: US citizen, non registered voter. Gets to live in US permanently,
but can't currently vote. Can hold most jobs.

\- Class D: US citizen, felony conviction. Cannot vote, ineligible for many
jobs, cannot serve on jury or hold public office.

\- Class F: US permanent resident. Cannot vote, ineligible for many jobs.

\- Class G: Non-US citizen with temporary visa. Cannot vote, jobs limited or
work prohibited, behavior monitored by ICE and CBP.

\- Class H: Illegal alien. Deport on sight.

~~~
trendia
Although you mention a hierarchy of benefits, the criteria to move up or down
is not currently dependent on your political views or opinion.

For instance, global entry is dependent on being a member of The Democratic or
Republican Party, and you won't be removed from it if you switch voter
representation.

That's the main problem with China's system: they're changing your rights
based on how compliant you are with the Communist Party's agenda.

------
Apocryphon
I suppose one solace free citizens have is that this scheme is much like the
weakness of the proposal for a big hulking border wall at the Rio Grande- both
ideas presume the existence of governments that are efficient and capable to
carry out such widely ambitious schemes. Would the PRC really be capable of
such an unprecedented creation, with a population so large and a country so
vast?

~~~
nyolfen
to be fair, china also has a storied and generally successful history with
massive walls

~~~
Apocryphon
Oh, that reference was more of an example of an ambitious project trumped by
going against a national character. The U.S. hasn't undertaken any huge public
infrastructural projects in quite some time, so how could the gov't build such
a massive wall? Similarly, how could China, a country's whose politics and
economy is _currently_ characterized by corruption and opportunism, be able to
create a seamless universal panopticon?

Then again, I suppose the Great Firewall has been quite a technical feat.

~~~
dragonbonheur
>China, a country's whose politics and economy is currently characterized by
corruption and opportunism

Successive US governments have appointed Goldman Sachs operatives to important
government positions and you find that China is Characterized by corruption
and opportunism?

>China, a country's whose politics and economy is currently characterized by
corruption and opportunism

The US started a war for bogus reasons for the benefit of corporations like
Haliburton and you find China is Characterized by corruption and opportunism?

>China, a country's whose politics and economy is currently characterized by
corruption and opportunism

Obama did absolutely nothing to punish the people responsible for the worst
financial market crash since the great depression and you find that China is
Characterized by corruption and opportunism?

>China, a country's whose politics and economy is currently characterized by
corruption and opportunism

Debbie Wasserman-Shultz empowered pay-day lenders using her public office in
Florida and you find that China is characterized by corruption and
opportunism?

>China, a country's whose politics and economy is currently characterized by
corruption and opportunism

Hillary and Bill Clinton have been PROVEN to have engaged in par-for-play
politics with operatives from Arab countries by the Podesta email leaks and
you find that China is characterized by corruption and opportunism?

>China, a country's whose politics and economy is currently characterized by
corruption and opportunism

The Koch Brothers have year after year used their money and influence to buy
politicians at all levels so that they could pollute, fire people and evade
taxes at will and you find that China is characterized by corruption and
opportunism?

>China, a country's whose politics and economy is currently characterized by
corruption and opportunism

The Syrian war has been nothing but another one of the USA's oil wars, with
the USA FUNDING, ARMING and TRAINING TERRORISTS (Tulsi Gabbard just proposed
the Stop Funding Terrorism Act, check it out), all so that Qatar could have a
pipeline built from Saudi Arabia to Turkey, with the blessing of the Obama
administration, and you find that China is characterized by corruption and
opportunism?

Throwing stones around while you're living in a glass house aren't you? Have
you even seen the CORRUPT people that Donnie-Tiny-Hands-the-Swamp-Monster has
appointed to his cabinet?

~~~
Fnoord
> [a], [b], [c], [d], [e], [f], [h] and you find that China is Characterized
> by corruption and opportunism?

The two are not mutually exclusive.

~~~
dragonbonheur
By the volume of money involved and the impact on the rest of the planet, the
USA is the single one country most characterized by corruption and opportunism
by a wide margin.

~~~
Apocryphon
The U.S. is pretty corrupt but China is plainly more corrupt by the generally
agreed standard:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index)

It's pretty neat that Hong Kong is perceived as right after the U.S., though!

~~~
paradite
Have you considered the possibility that low corruption in the U.S. is partly
attributed to the widespread practice of lobbying and political donations,
which serve essentially the same purpose as corruption but not counted as
corruption? (Thanks Russia)

~~~
Apocryphon
That's certainly possible. I am not denying that the U.S. has corruption. I'm
just saying that it's much easier to characterize a newly-developed nation
such as China, which went through rapid modernization in the last half century
(and much in the last three decades alone), as marked by corruption, because
that's often characteristic of a newly booming country. The Chinese
civilization is ancient, but the PRC is a relatively new country. The sort of
corruption the U.S. experience has is been baked in, over time. One generally
does not compare corruption in long-modernized first world countries with
countries that have either gone through drastic government changes recently,
or decolonized countries. They simply exist in different scales.

------
intrasight
What I find most disturbing about this story is that the "corporate
kleptocracy masquerading as a government" paradigm that exists in China and
Russia is now headed to the USA with the Trump administration. This type of
"political scoring" will follow next. The Trump team has already requested
from government departments the names of employees who attended global warming
conferences. Welcome to the new America.

------
FullMtlAlcoholc
Seems right. Since we already implemented _1984_ , the next logical step is to
make _Black Mirror_ a reality. I'm looking forward to retiring as a social
media coach.

------
miguelrochefort
I've been predicting the death of privacy and the rise of the social score for
a decade. It's the logical next step in society, and I can't wait for it to
concretize. Mainly, it should focus on trust and reliability.

In the future, the only crime will be to lie (which includes doing what you
promise not to do). Naturally, privacy will become a thing of the past.

Once we have reliable trust scores, the world will be a lot more efficient and
the workforce will become liquid (no interview, the employer will trust that
you're the right fit for the job).

All other forms of currency will disappear, and only in scarcity will those
with a higher score have priority over others.

Naturally, this will also be the end of copyrights and patents, as these cause
artificial scarcities that are no longer relevant.

Thank you China.

------
hkon
The chinese want this. They have no problem understanding the logic of: There
are so many people in China, how are we otherwise going to prevent crimes.
It's the same explanation for everything bad that the government over there
does. I have talked to dozens of chinese people about this, always same
answers.

~~~
smallnamespace
Have you ever considered the possibility that China's society and norms differ
markedly from what you're used to, and that they might have a point?

Sounds pretty presumptuous for a person who's (I assume) never lived in China
to claim that they know what's good for the Chinese better than the Chinese
themselves do.

In particular, political elites and bureacratic, centralized government arise
_exactly_ because high populations densities and large populations lead to
conflicts that require specialized decisionmakers to resolve. That's why
scattered bands of hunter gatherers don't create formal governments, but
cities and large countries do.

~~~
hkon
As westerners we honor free speech and we do not like censorship. We do not
like torture or political imprisonment. I was offering my experience in
discussing these issues with chinese people of whom I know a lot.

Part of my point was to bring forth the fact that stuff we automatically think
of as bad, is pretty much a non-issue for the chinese, because to them it
makes sense.

Human rights, democracy and free speech is better than oppression.

~~~
smallnamespace
Do you think that the Chinese people you talk to are _wrong_ then, and that
the Chinese should wholeheartedly adopt Western values, or that people in each
society should find solutions that make sense in terms of their own historical
development and cultural norms?

I'd like to remind you that the track record of simply imposing a formal
Western model of governance (with a written Constitution, laws, elections, the
whole shebang) on societies that are used to other ways of doing things hasn't
tended worked out very well -- e.g. Iraq or Afghanistan.

~~~
hkon
Yes, I think they are wrong. I understand your point, but not your intention.

Cultures are different. Some cultures are better than others. I think western
culture is the best and I would like everyone to experience the same freedoms
we do.

~~~
smallnamespace
> I think western culture is the best

I thought that Westerners finally agreed that cultural imperialism is bad? Yet
here you are proclaiming the superiority of Western culture over all other
cultures.

It's wrong to judge another culture without having lived in it yourself for
some time.

I don't even mean this on a just moral level, but simply on a practical one --
if you've never lived somewhere, how do you know if their society works well
or not? It's very easy to get incorrect impressions from news or talking to
people.

~~~
hkon
Of course we can judge, we even have some standardized criterias to use.

Adherence to the basic human rights as laid out by the UN. I would say any
society who adheres the closest to the human rights is the best. The further
away, the lower rank it has.

I don't have to live somewhere for an extended period of time to make
judgements based on established "best practises" for human societies.

~~~
smallnamespace
Human rights is largely a Western idea [1] and the UN was founded, dominated,
and run largely by Western nations (Russia is sort of half-way between East
and West in that sense), so your argument reduces to 'any society that best
adheres to Western political and social norms is the best'.

You may even be _correct_ that Western norms are objectively the best way to
run a society. It just seems to me that you're remarkably unwilling to analyze
or challenge your own cultural biases and assumptions even a little bit, even
though that careful, rational analysis is very much part of Western culture.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights#16th.E2.80.9318th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights#16th.E2.80.9318th_century)

~~~
hkon
Yes, thanks for clarifying the origin of human rights. It makes the west even
better. Imagine, we came up with the concept.

I also think you are agreeing with me, but for some reason you find my
statements hard to accept.

Sometimes challenge and analysis is good, sometimes it's a waste of time. I
think this is a case of the latter.

~~~
smallnamespace
I don't agree with you at all. The best part of Western culture is rationalism
and analysis.

The West moved from monarchy to democracy and developed human rights over
hundreds of years of smart people criticizing their own societies and asking
how to improve it. That included studying _other_ societies and keeping an
open mind about what works best. That's day and night from your openly
dismissive, close-minded attitude.

To the original question, I think a naive and direct transplantation of
Western political forms to China would be an unmitigated disaster precisely
because of cultural differences. China should find its own path to creating a
just society without slavishly and uncritically copying the West (but it
should look abroad for good ideas).

~~~
fnovd
>That included studying other societies and keeping an open mind about what
works best.

Yes. What works best for the individual is different than what works best for
the state, though. 'What if the state should be more important than the
individual?' is not a traditional Western question.

~~~
smallnamespace
Food for thought though: Western philosophical thought prefers to draw
distinctions between parts of a whole and then focus on how those parts are
different and opposed. This is in contrast to Chinese philosophical thought,
which stereotypically emphasizes the oneness and compatibility of disparate
concepts. You can see this in how Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and other
philosophical schools were all accepted and syncretized, while the West has
always undergone violent ideological conflicts over relatively minor
differences in doctrine (Protestantism vs. Catholicism vs. Eastern Orthodoxy).

Of course the interests of the state and the people can sometimes come into
conflict, but by and large, _the state and the individual are part of an
organic whole, namely, all of society._ China's own political culture has had
a long, long history pondering the question of what government's role should
be, and has mostly concluded that a government must rule justly and well in
order to be a legitimate [1]. The question is not be 'What's more important,
the individual or the state?', but rather, 'How should society be organized so
that the individual and the state will cooperate for mutual benefit?'. Just
like one usually doesn't ask the question 'what's more important, the hand or
the foot?'.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven#The_right_to...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven#The_right_to_rule_and_the_right_of_rebellion)

> Throughout the history of China, times of poverty and natural disasters were
> often taken as signs that heaven considered the incumbent ruler unjust and
> thus in need of replacement.

------
gbog
From the article: "Big-data systems in democracies are not designed for social
control." First I don't think calling western countries "democracies" is
correct. From Europe the USA is certainly not embodying the model of
democracy, if democracy is power to the people (it's more akin to power to the
rich people).

Buy even then, big data is designed from the ground up as a way to serve
better ads, which is the companies way to do social control. So you have the
choice between Pepsi/Coke controlled society or Gov controlled society. I'll
have neither, thanks.

------
jimnotgym
The Chinese government must see the UK's Investigatory Powers Act, the
_snoopers charter_ as a great inspiration...

------
eceppda
Any time you see an article discrediting China from the Western press, like
this one, try this:

Replace the text "China", with "US". What's remarkable is that the story
rarely changes. Every undemocratic, evil-doing charge leveled by Western media
at China is happening in the West as well.

I'm well aware that it pays to villainize China in the press today. I assume
they've made too much of our stuff or something, and now they're trying to be
free of Western dominance or some heresy like that.

Ohh! You evil China! Trying to be free of Western dominion!

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Whenever you read a biased article about the West in the Chinese press, simply
replace the text "West" with "China". What's remarkable is that the story
rarely changes. Every evil charge leveled by the Chinese media at the West is
happening in china as well. The emperor literally has no clothes on.

I'm well aware that it pays to villanize the USA in the Chinese press today.
It definitely distracts from problems at home, and has been a standard play in
the CPC handbook for a long time.

Ohh! You evil west! Trying to impose western imperialistic ideals on the world
like human rights and voting in elections.

------
tn13
Wet dream of American politicians. All this only leads to a low trust society
which eventually collapses due to its exploitation.

------
owly
And who here thinks that LinkedIn, FaceBook, Google aren't gathering similar
data points? Just a matter of time...

------
xnull2guest
The United States already includes social media into police threat scoring
algorithms, which are used to track and prioritize police surveillance and
citizen 'nudging'.

Algorithms across the US attempt to constrain the conversation to maintain
confidence in public institutions. Facebook censored me from posting the
Snowden documents. It stopped Mayday protestors from organizing. Amazon took
down Wikileaks (for a short while).

This article is just an instance of hate-them-not-us propaganda. The problem
is that I don't hate the Chinese, they are a peaceful country (read: are in
and have not been in wars, are leaders of the UN peacekeeping forces, and do
not militarily interfere in other countries' affairs). Plus they have done
nothing to me and I love all the Chinese people I have met.

~~~
zeusk
> they are a peaceful country (read: no wars)

Hah. Their aggression in/with South China Sea, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, India is
just fake news right?

~~~
smallnamespace
When has China _actually_ been aggressive with Japan, Korean, and India, other
then minor border conflicts and skirmishes?

The South China sea stuff is indeed China throwing its weight around, sure,
but need I remind you that China's foreign interventions has been far more
restrained than, say, the US (Iraq 1 and Iraq 2, Afghanistan, Libya, Panama)
or Russia's (Afghanistan, Ukraine, Syria) even in the last three decades.

Going back slightly further, Japan invaded and occupied half of China and
killed millions of Chinese people over the course of a decade, while it was
the US that invaded, nuked, and then occupied Japan, even though the US never
suffered civilian casualties from Japanese attack. Yet you don't see the
Chinese government crying out for bloody revenge, do you?

One the one hand, we have China asserting claims to sea resources and sea
lanes there are right in its back yard, where it has a legitimate strategic
and national interest. On the other, we have the outright invasion,
occupation, and overthrow of sovereign governments. Which country is
_objectively_ more peaceful?

~~~
AlexCoventry
Wasn't the US/Korean War essentially a proxy war with China?

Also, 80,000 Chinese soldiers invaded Vietnam in 1978, with the intention to
take Hanoi. It was by no means a minor skirmish.

~~~
smallnamespace
The proximate reason for China getting involved in Korea was self-defense. It
has been rather convincingly argued that if it weren't Truman and Douglas
MacArthur's insistence on going all the way to the Yalu River (the border
between North Korea and China), China would never have intervened militarily
[1]. This is despite repeated warnings from China that they would intervene if
US troops continued driving north, warnings which were completely ignored by
Truman and his war cabinet [2].

The US had repeatedly sworn to not cross the 38th parallel in the past. Once
the US decided to invade North Korea proper, Truman's promises to stop at the
Yalu River no longer seemed credible to China's government. Note that Beijing
is very close to Manchuria, and both the Manchus and Japanese invaded China
along this route in the past.

The US has certainly threatened war against any foreign powers that interfered
anywhere in the entire _Western hemisphere_ [3] -- not sure how anyone can
then turn around and fault China for reacting to American troops driving right
up to its Manchurian border. Remember this was in 1951, the Cold War was
getting warmed up, and the US had nuked Japan only a few years earlier. No
responsible Chinese government could have ignored the very real and credible
threat of another invasion.

The Vietnamese invasion has an interesting history -- the PLA invaded, failed
to achieve its main objectives, then marched right back less than a month
later. Certainly not a full-scale invasion nor an occupation, considering the
proximate cause was to 'punish' Vietnam for invading Cambodia.

[1]
[http://www3.nccu.edu.tw/~lorenzo/Hao%20Chinas%20Decision.pdf](http://www3.nccu.edu.tw/~lorenzo/Hao%20Chinas%20Decision.pdf)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#China_intervenes_.2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#China_intervenes_.28October_.E2.80.93_December_1950.29)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroe_Doctrine)

------
westiseast
In case HackerNews is wondering, this is what a 50 Cent Party member looks
like.

Seriously.

The comments contain all the classic deflections of _wumao_ posts: the endless
whataboutisms, claims that China is peaceful, minimizing the situation in
China, outright lies, a seemingly endless and authoritative knowledge of any
situation in China you care to mention that _always_ parrots the government
line...

Everyone grows up learning a version of the Boy Who Cried Wolf stories. The
moral is: when someone willfully engages in deception, it destroys their
creditworthiness, even when they might be telling the truth later.

Maybe you aren't _wumao_. Fine - but the Chinese government has invested years
and billions in utterly destroying the trustworthiness of your viewpoints by
employing people who _sound exactly, 100% like you_. Sorry buddy, it
undermines all of the possibly valid points you are making.

~~~
krapp
Please don't accuse people of commenting in bad faith. It only poisons the
well of discussion and breeds paranoia and suspicion, and political threads
are too toxic around here as it is.

Attack the message, not the messenger.

~~~
westiseast
Agreed. My point is kind of that China has been poisoning the well for years
by employing paid commenters and schills to parrot the exact same arguments.
And then when anyone points this out, they're accused of poisoning the debate
:)

This guy is entitled to his opinions, but unfortunately the entire pro-China
position is untrustworthy because of this (ref my previous comment).

~~~
krapp
>And then when anyone points this out, they're accused of poisoning the debate
:)

Because they do.

If you're wrong, you're doing their work for them by sowing discord and
mistrust in the community. If you're right, you're doing their work for them
by distracting from the subject and making the thread about the threat of the
enemy within. The one thing you probably won't accomplish is getting them to
stop.

The only way to win the game is not to play by their rules, and to not make it
personal. If you really believe someone is a shill, report it to the admins,
they claim to take this sort of thing seriously.

~~~
xnull2guest
Please report this to the moderators (I looked but don't know how), as I would
like to be vindicated.

There's a downvote brigade on my posts right now and anything I want to
contribute gets detailed into accusations of my being some kind of agent.

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B1FF_PSUVM
The Agnelli and Rotschild (proprietors) have brass balls.

Everybody knows the Chinese just copy Western inventions.

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afriday11
I don't see this program going through. The government there (any everywhere)
is constantly trying crazy schemes like this with little results to show.

Instead of worrying about what China is doing, those of us in the US should be
worried what our own government and private corporations are up to.

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seanmcdirmid
Unless one is in china, then they should really worry about what the Chinese
government is gong to do.

But I digress: the real danger is that other countries will use china as a
blue print for their own digital authoritarianism, perhaps even the USA.

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anotherarray
This is terrible, but isn't it also a reality in the West?

Privacy laws getting loose, private business making deals with the government,
social acceptance based on a "state of emergency".

Only difference is that the infrastructure of "Western digital totalitarian
states" is run by private corporations.

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4818
Everyone is rating their citizens. Internet has become a too dangerous place
for ordinary people.

