
For now at least, China's citizens are embracing social-credit systems - petethomas
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-24/why-china-s-social-credit-systems-are-surprisingly-popular
======
Proven
Each to his own. It doesn’t bother me that it doesn’t bother them.

It also doesn’t mean it shouldn’t bother me if the government I live under
were to introduce a similar system.

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beaker52
I wonder what people who spend hundreds of hours managing their own NAS,
maintaining private email servers, avoiding Google and Facebook, using VPNs
etc do to protect their privacy in the face of real world surveillance. I'm
imagining that they don't walk around wearing balaclavas, using dead letter
drops and paying with cash.

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sonnyblarney
I wonder when people see that the system itself is being cheated, ie children
of important officials getting free bonus points or not losing their points
due to 'that little crime' ... if people will lose faith in it?

Why do people think a system that is corrupt can just maintain this pristine
system within one that is not?

In a regime wherein such tools are used to control and oppressed, this will
clearly be another one of those tools.

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abhiminator
Nice article. I highly recommend watching Martin Jacques' TED talk [0] on this
subject. It's interesting how people in China view the State as an _intimate_
part of their family instead of something of an invasion, in contrast to
societies in the West; which, I suspect, may be because of their collectivist
roots.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imhUmLtlZpw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imhUmLtlZpw)

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alextooter
Please don't represent us.What you doing is same as Big Brother.

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visarga
> At the same time, a whopping 76 percent of survey participants said that
> “mutual mistrust between citizens” is a problem in Chinese society. Social
> credit systems are viewed as a means of bridging that trust gap.

I'd say on the contrary, when anyone could snitch on you, you'd lose your
trust in society. The social credit system might have the exact opposite
effect than intended.

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PakG1
When I compare the history of China and the history of Europe (and let's face
it, North American norms derive a lot from Europe), I think there's a huge
cultural divergence that can be pinpointed to one spot in history: Europe had
a Magna Carta moment while China did not. I think that this is the
foundational and fundamental thing that creates a lot of the differences in
political and cultural norms.

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abc-xyz
It's important to realize that lack of public outcry/protests, or even public
approval, does not necessarily mean that they support it. All my Chinese
Tsinghua/Peking friends (20+) find it horrifying, yet many of them will find
ways to show support for both this and other government propaganda, because
they realize doing so will be beneficial for their future (even those who
don't realize the government is building a profile based on everything they've
ever said can still find value in sharing the propaganda because their
friends, family, coworkers, teachers and bosses will see that they're
"patriots").

Why should they risk their future/life fighting for something they don't
believe they have the ability to change? It's like asking, why weren't the
Germans resisting Hitler's government? It's easier said than done, heck, I
even feel worried about posting these comments even though I don't live in
China anymore and have no intention of ever going back.

~~~
thrwy_01
Chinese [ethno]nationalism is a sick disease reminiscent of german or Japanese
nationalism pre WWII. That Chinese people, of all groups, don't recognize the
similarities constantly shocks me, along the same lines about how Chinese are
in general very sensitive about losing face (American translation - ego trip),
and that causes them to do things that gives them a bad reputation in the eyes
of others - a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy.

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jcbrand
I recently read Jordan Peterson's "12 Rules for Life" and one of the things he
mentioned that really struck me, was that people who suffer from agoraphobia
(fear of public places) eventually end up with the same fear (that they have
when outside) inside their own homes; but since they're already home there's
nowhere for them to go so they're stuck in perpetual fear.

It's also known by psychologists that a fear gets strengthened whenever an
individual purposefully avoids the fear-generating situation (e.g. a public
place), and it progressively gets weakened when you routinely expose yourself
to the fearful situation.

So, regarding mistrust between individuals and using credit scores to try and
"solve" this...

I expect that dystopic technological surveillance "solutions" such as Chinese
social credit scores will actually over time weaken trust between individuals
in the same way that purposefully avoiding public places increases someone's
agoraphobia.

If you are a generally mistrustful person, then you're not going to start
trusting people more due to social credit scores.

Trust is an act of faith, and faith is necessary when you don't actually know.

Imagine someone who is not registered for most social credit systems (perhaps
because they're privacy conscious) comes to ask you for help or wants to do
business with you. Is a social credit system going to make other people more
trusting of that person? Of course not, it's going to make them more
distrustful of that person.

Also, as someone has already mentioned, by letting people snitch on one
another, credit score systems will foster even more distrust between people.

It reminds me of the Stasi in Eastern Germany, where neighbors and even
spouses would report one another's activities to the secret police.

These systems foster further distrust, instead of trust.

As humans we need to overcome negative, fearful emotions like distrust by
learning to judge character and to have courage and compassion, not by trying
to outsource all our emotional and cognitive responsibilities to "apps".

The 20th century was full of social horrors, including China (e.g. Mao's
famine in which 10s of millions of people starved to death due to forced
collectivisation of farms). I get the feeling that the 21st century will have
its fair share, and schemes such social credit scores will play their part in
bringing them about.

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new_here
Interesting article about a topic that Westerners generally find dystopian.

However, it didn’t make much mention about how this system can and has been
abused to punish dissidents (e.g. feminists) and how citizens with low social
credit can redeem themselves. From other articles about cases I’ve read the
rules seem to be quite opaque and somewhat subjective to whims of the
enforcers.

~~~
ekianjo
China is not a Western country so the concept of individual liberties and
having the individual as the most important unit in society, as a concept, is
pretty much foreign (literally!) to them. You will find very similar trends
across Asia. Japan is an interesting case where the current constitution was
written by Americans after WWII superimposed on a culture that's quite
different in the first place.

This is for similar reason that you can't remove a dictator and install a
democracy from scratch in its place. If the culture/mindset to support a
democracy is not there, in the hearts of individuals, it won't work. Proven
numerous times already in recent history.

~~~
bobthepanda
What’s interesting is that Taiwan derives some of its routes from the same
Chinese culture, yet independently came up with support for human rights and
democracy. So did South Korea.

~~~
ekianjo
Taiwan had a strong incentive to differentiate culturally to justify that they
should be an independent country.

Take Singapore which is mostly Chinese and the authoritarian model applies
like in China (of course in different degrees but direction wise they are more
authoritarian than most western countries).

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droithomme
In the US we have all this as well, we just are secretive about it and people
don't know the rules. China is more transparent and open about it.

Both systems are dystopian big brother to some, yet utopian to many others.

~~~
cauldron
Oh, not again, this narative seems to be very popular, but it's based on
ignorance.

------
est
Because in really many chinese people cheat. And cheaters are so rampant that
people would rather ask Big Brother to step up.

China started this national wide 诚信 campaign in 2001, during which time the
Chinese society is utter chaos and China promptly joined the WTO. China
entered its economic boom, but the ultimate outcome is the social credit
system.

Highly recommended CCC talk here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18773303](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18773303)

P.S. I think since western kept bitching about the IP theft problem so much,
companies should use the social credit system as a targeted weapon to punish
cheaters. It works.

~~~
thrwy_01
We hear a lot about Chinese cheating, from sat scores to ip theft. I've long
wondered - why is cheating endemic in China whereas you don't hear the same
complaints about people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore; places with large
ethnic Chinese populations which should be very similar culturally to mainland
China. It seems implausible that the value systems in these places would have
so widely diverged in a relatively short amount of time. Or perhaps it is the
legal and regulatory environment (or lack thereof) that brings out the worst
in people when they know they can get away with it?

~~~
est
> why is cheating endemic in China whereas you don't hear the same complaints
> about people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore;

Because cheating is a cultural rather than ethnical thing.

There are ethnical Chinese people in those regions you listed, but sure
mainland China sailed a totally different cultural course over the last 70
years.

In mainland china, cheating mostly happen because of over competition. If you
don't cheat, others will and will crush you in business or academic
competition. Cheaters go home for chicken dinner while non-cheaters goes to
jail.

~~~
thrwy_01
Isnt there a similar level of competition in all of those places?

Also I've met a lot of mainland Chinese people who recently immigrated to the
us and can say that they don't seem like unscrupulous people at a
significantly greater rate than the general population.

~~~
ido
The penalties for "losing" are much lower in rich countries.

My grandfather used to say that he left the Soviet Union because he didn't
want to live in a country where you have to cheat in order to have a good
life.

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onion2k
As the article itself points out, the Chinese media is full of stories about
Chinese people being targets of scams by food producers, eCommerce companies
selling fakes, and scams by one another (dating scams and so on). These
social-credit surveillance programs have been marketed to the people they're
aimed at as a benefit that protects them from potential crime. It's the same
everywhere - here in the UK we have the most CCTV cameras per capita than
anywhere else in the world and they're always talked about by the government
and the police as tools for "protecting the people from crime." TV
documentaries about the police feature them 'following' criminals around town
centres using CCTV. It's impressive. It works. The fact the cameras also
gather data about _everyone else_ who isn't a criminal is never mentioned.

People respond well to things that make them feel safer, regardless of whether
they're _actually_ safer, so privacy-invading surveillance technology is
marketed as a something that does just that. The actual reason why governments
want it, in order to keep the people in check, isn't good PR.

In the case of China, they've had decades of government PR telling the people
to be fearful, and at the same time selling them the thing that means they can
stop being fearful. It's not surprising the people like it.

~~~
nerbert
In normal countries you have a strong civil society & consumer associations
that have the teeth to bite these scammers.

~~~
netsharc
I won't agree with the "normal countries", but I wonder at what point does a
society become uncivil?

Obviously in a tribal village in the past you know who lived in the hut next
door and it was like a big family who trusted each other (food was shared,
mothers would take care of each others' kids). Maybe it's related to the
Dunbar number?

~~~
agent008t
From an outside perspective, Japan still seems extremely civil despite being
very densely populated. I have never felt safer anywhere else as a visitor. I
suspect a near-ubiquitous level of high homogeneous culture is a big factor.

