10 ms·

In China, Your Credit Score Is Affected by Your Political Opinions

158 points by peterkelly 11y ago

pavornyoh 11y ago
I am curious to see how that is calculated and what percentage it is of the 950 score. An absurd decision if you ask me.
- jrometty 11y ago
  i feel the exact same. this feels like something that would make most economists tear hair out.
- prewett 11y ago
  This is a perfectly rational decision, you just need to look at it from the value system making the decision. The Party's #1 goal is to remain in power. Pretty much everything they do is with that in mind. They also seem to assume that revolution is always knocking at the door. [1] Communism has had a long history of ideological coercion (it's pretty much a founding principle), so this sort of thing should come as no surprise. In fact, it's a lot more subtle than most. [2] [1] This may not be so far-fetched. Several years ago a Party document was released documenting 100k or 200k protests, ranging from small to large. When the bullet train derailed 3 or 5 years ago, Weibo went wild within minutes and ultimately some provincial Party officials took the fall. And the example of Arab Spring has got to be pretty scary. [2] I don't know if it is true anymore, but historically people were encouraged to rat out neighbors with ideological deficiencies. Not just in China, this is pretty much standard fare in totalitarian states.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    China always expecting revolution makes sense. It was founded by revolution.
1971genocide 11y ago
Does anyone know why pia is blocked in the UK ? Page is not opening.
- subliminalpanda 11y ago
  blocked in Oman as well.
- vidarh 11y ago
  Works fine for me.
- mtgx 11y ago
  Probably for the simple fact that it's a VPN service...so they blocked it with the "porn filter".
  - prodmerc 11y ago
    Do they block domains with the keywords "privacy" "private" in them?
- Nexxxeh 11y ago
  It's always worked for me, on all the big five. I've just tested it now (having disconnected from my PIA VPN) and it worked fine. The VPN works too (obviously). I do sometimes find that switching to TCP (which should make it slower due to overhead) makes it faster, but it's ISP dependent, which implies the OpenVPN UDP traffic is being throttled.
- Symbiote 11y ago
  According to https://www.blocked.org.uk/ https://www.blocked.org.uk/ there's an SSL timeout with Sky and Virgin Media. I'm not sure how reliable that tool is, testing with ThePirateBay.gd gives "dnserror" for all the ISPs except one, but only adds a blocked since time for one (BT).
dang 11y ago
This is fascinating but also tendentious. Is the information reliable? If not, is there a more accurate source?
- mtgx 11y ago
  A source from earlier this year: http://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/china-rates-its-own-citizens-including-online-behaviour~a3979668/ http://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/china-rates-its-own-citi... And one from last year: https://chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/planning-outline-for-the-construction-of-a-social-credit-system-2014-2020/ https://chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/plan...
akramar 11y ago
> our credit score is simple... It’s measured from our assets, our income, and if we have bought on credit in the past and managed it well. Having worked in mortgage lending for many years, I'd like to point out that this isn't true. Your score (generated by the big 3 bureaus) does not take income or assets into account, it's based on credit utilization, payment history, and similar factors reported by your existing creditors and public records (BKs, judgments). That's why more factors go into extending you credit (credit card, mortgage, auto loan), than your score alone.
- Falkvinge 11y ago
  Fair enough. In Sweden (my native country), the primary factors for a good credit rating are assets, income, and the lack of mismanaged credit.
- marincounty 11y ago
  I still believe credit card companies redline communities in America. I have gotten better cc offers in the better--strike better; richer postal codes. I can't prove it though. One of my biggest mistake was using a credit card. I wish I threw out that first one I received upon graduation.
  - Vraxx 11y ago
    As an aside to your main point, I am curious about why you have a complete disdain for using credit cards. I'm certainly not advocating using a credit card to spend beyond your limits, but intelligent application of a credit card can just net you assets. I'd also like to point out that I find the motives of credit card companies to encourage people to spend beyond their limits through temporary/immediate convenience deplorable, but that is not the only use case for these cards. For example I have a cash back credit card that I run every purchase that doesn't entail a fee for credit card usage through and pay it off immediately. I accrue/pay no interest, and still don't spend beyond my means, but I get a discount everywhere.
- westiseast 11y ago
  Exactly - hence why my wife who owns a house, a car and a thriving business couldn't get a loan, but our previously almost-bankrupt credit-addicted friend could. Because my wife had a single credit card she lost and forgot to pay the installments on @400 GBP credit, whereas our friend regularly paid hers off.
cm2187 11y ago
In a country where lobying for the wrong political opinions can land you in jail, it is actually rational to treat political opinions in the same way as potential criminal behavior from a credit scoring point of view. Particularly in a country where it also works the other way round, where having the right proximity with the party can be very lucrative.
zcbenz 11y ago
There is no evidence that the credit score is affected by political opinions, the only quote “Sesame Credit, however, also uses other data to calculate the scores, such as a person’s hobbies, interaction with friends, shopping habits and lifestyle.” says nothing about political opinions, and I can verify there is no related thing on Sesame Credit's website (Chinese is my native language). Also Sesame Credit is a private company, it is absolutely not equal to China.
- United857 11y ago
  In the US, the credit scores are maintained by private companies as well. Yet, they still can potentially affect your interactions with the government (e.g. applying for government jobs requiring security clearance).
Animats 11y ago
This seems to be Alibaba coming up with a credit scoring system for people who don't have banking relationships. Here's more info.[1] The People's Bank of China already has a more traditional credit rating system. But most people in China don't have a credit rating in any form.[2] This seems to be a scheme to get the rest of the population plugged into the system. There's a Government policy document on this "social credit system".[3] The Alibaba thing appears to be a trial under that system. Of course, it's a Government control thing, too. But China already had that - it's called a dangan. In China, many people really did have a Permanent Record. That's not as important as it used to be, because it was employer-maintained, mostly by state employers. With more private employers, it's less of an issue. This new system may become a modernized version of the dangan. China has a centuries-long history of keeping records on everyone. The old systems worked when there was very limited population mobility and job mobility. Now, with a more flexible workforce, the old system is getting an upgrade. [1] http://www.chinadailyasia.com/business/2015-06/09/content_15274221.html http://www.chinadailyasia.com/business/2015-06/09/content_15... [2] http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/05/08/why-there-are-no-credit-scores-in-china/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/05/08/why-there-are-no-credit-... [3] https://chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/planning-outline-for-the-construction-of-a-social-credit-system-2014-2020/ https://chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/plan...
- blazespin 11y ago
  Eww ewww ewww! I never realized it was this bad. You have a funny idea of "worked". This seems like pure evil oppression. Long live freedom of speech. That being said we have a similar thing in the west, like clearance that you need for some government jobs(checks your connections to enemy states, drug use, general untrustworthy behavior). Fortunately, such government jobs isn't too big part of the economy. Ideally we'll keep it that way.
  - nxb 11y ago
    But go talk to some people who've only ever experienced these types of business cultures, and they'll start listing for you a ton of reasons why it would be IMPOSSIBLE for the business world to operate as well or better, if it were any other way. These slavery books are still pretty common in parts of Europe too.
ryanlol 11y ago
It's sad to see Rick Falkvinge seemingly advocating for a company that claims it doesn't have to comply with subpoenas while operating in the US.
- Falkvinge 11y ago
  I'll support most entities - not only corporations - that put people's rights ahead of government agencies' data cleptocracy.
  - ryanlol 11y ago
    Even the ones that grossly misrepresent the services they provide? PIAs marketing straight up exploits people who aren't tech savvy enough to understand that the promises they make are meaningless.
jensen123 11y ago
"Such people will also be barred from serving in certain high-status and influential positions, like government official, reporter, CEO, statistician, and similar." For all practical purposes, I don't think this would be so different from what we already have in the West for people like CEOs, government officials, reporters etc. These people seem to be kicked out as soon as they do something politically incorrect. They don't seem to have much freedom. For example, the CEO of Mozilla who gave like 1000 dollars to some anti-gay cause like 10 years ago, or the CEO of BP who hired gay escorts or John Derbyshire who wrote something unflattering about blacks. Ok, it's not the government doing it in the West, but the majority mob. But does it really matter whether it's some elitist government or the majority in a democracy doing it?
- tluyben2 11y ago
  But "These people seem to be kicked out as soon as they do something politically incorrect." in the West depends on the country/state/company/current political side of the gov etc what is considered 'politically (in)correct' and they would generally actually have to DO it, not only say something. I hear CEO's/reporters/etc 'in the west' making weird too right or too left-ish remarks and no-one cares. In China that seems all quite clear ; they would be out while here it really very much depends what they say/do, where they are and in what capacity.
- ageek123 11y ago
  Not "majority mob" -- more like "vocab minority mob"
- calibraxis 11y ago
  These poor, starving CEOs constantly kick people out of jobs for simply annoying them — it's called "firing". Tyranny of the corporate mob bosses.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- blumkvist 11y ago
  The CEO of the world's biggest company by market cap. was revealed gay by accident on TV and nothing happened.
legulere 11y ago
> And at 750, you get a similar fast track to a coveted Schengen visa. It's a visa to Luxembourg according to the link, so Luxembourg needs to be the main place to stay. Also not really strange that they will take a credit score. Usually (when applying to a German visa as someone from mainland China) you need to show that you have a steady income and need to provide bank account statements that show that you have enough money to sustain yourself. It also criticizes that other people have an influence over the credit score. This is done because there's not enough data and regularly happens in other countries (e.g. taking into account where you live). That it will be used for political control is certainly a valid fear, but it doesn't seem to be reality yet like claimed in the article.
jmnicolas 11y ago
In France there's no such thing as the credit score. Of course banks probably (certainly) have something to rate their customers, but it's not public. And from what I can read about the credit score, I don't think we're missing much.
- Pyxl101 11y ago
  So, how do banks decide how much to loan you, if you want a loan, or at what interest rate? My history of being responsible with debt enables me to borrow large amounts of money while putting a small percentage down, and paying a small percentage interest (3.375%) on the principal. Banks can compete to offer better rates or terms on a loan like that (home mortgage, USA). Some notion of a credit score, or a person's general creditworthiness is necessary for there to be competition in the loan market. Otherwise how would it work - banks are equally willing to loan to all people, despite their income, savings, and history of paying back loans reliably? It can be abused but it generally seems to promote an efficient marketplace for loans.
  - mziel 11y ago
    I'm not French, but: http://blog.sextantproperties.com/2012/08/21/the-positives-of-having-no-credit-check-in-france/ http://blog.sextantproperties.com/2012/08/21/the-positives-o... >However, if you apply for a credit or mortgage in France, all you will have to provide is your last 3-month bank statements and the last 3 month pay slips (or last 3 year tax returns). It is that simple. There is no credit report or score for you to worry about.
  - prodmerc 11y ago
    Probably the old fashioned way - by looking at employment history (salary, length of employment, etc.), savings and whatever assets you have (which you can potentially sell to give them their money back in case something happens). Basically, everything besides a history of paying back loans :-). Those lacking (some of) these things get smaller loans/bigger interest rates or don't get a loan at all...
  - spinchange 11y ago
ck2 11y ago
In China your freedom or even your lifespan might be affected by your political opinions.
p4sh4 11y ago
"But China has already announced that it, or something very like it, will become mandatory from 2020." Any source besides this? http://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/china-rates-its-own-citizens-including-online-behaviour~a3979668/ http://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/china-rates-its-own-citi...
geldedus 11y ago
Of course it is. China is a communist country, where's the news? This is how communist countries work.
xiaq 11y ago
> If you’re buying things that the regime appreciates, like dishwashers and baby supplies, your credit score increases. If you’re buying videogames, your score takes a negative hit. > But China has already announced that it, or something very like it, will become mandatory from 2020. > But the kicker is that if any of your friends do this — publish opinions without prior permission, or report accurate but embarrassing news — your score will also deteriorate. Why should I believe those things instead of all those propaganda nonsense? A big "[citation needed]" label is missing beside every sentence in this article...
blisterpeanuts 11y ago
It seems to me that this credit score system--if real--would ultimately be self-defeating, for two reasons. First, among a cynical and rebellious youth population, a low score would become a prestigious thing, proof of your courage and gutsy attitude, a kind of street cred. Second, it would limit economic activity. If you cut off millions of people from car loans on the basis of their questionable postings or online affiliations, the ones really hurt will be the banks and car companies. Idiotic, and would lead to many companies disregarding the "credit" scores. I don't see this as workable, though it does sound like something the government would like to have.
- westiseast 11y ago
  Not sure what your understanding of China is, but I want to correct your assumption of (1). Most Chinese youth arent rebellious in any substantial way. They've grown up in an environment that is strongly Confucian, and there isn't really this "be what you want to be, break free, live life, freedom of youth" narrative that we have in most of the developed world. Kids are very very unrebellious and I doubt there would grow a culture of 'showing off' your bad credit score. On the 2nd point, I'm not sure either. The political element of this is likely to be a small factor, not a prime one. The government tends to be very specific these days about targeting people who are activists rather than cracking down on anyone who says anything. Finally, people in China are generally used to this kind of BS, and whether consciously or through 'brainwashing', they don't tend to randomly spout political positions or anti-government rhetoric unless they know they are on safe ground. I don't mean it won't be an oppressive, inefficient, opaque and abused system, just that it won't result in millions being locked out of loans or the economy suffering that much.
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    I am in agreement. Rule of law is a predictable stat that creditors like to evaluate risk. Thing is, China's application of law can be very political. So while creditors can't predict that the legal system will work as expected like in America or Western Europe, they can predict that even economically successful political dissidents are at a measurable risk to losing everything very quickly.
PythonicAlpha 11y ago
A similar thing could happen in the west. Some time ago, it was in the news, that Facebook got a patent on credit scoring depending on your friends and social network. With the wrong (maybe leftist or file-sharing) friends, your credit score could drop in the near future.
smoyer 11y ago
Did anyone else reading the headline expect some equivalent to "In Soviet Russia ..."? The article is a bit more informative than I was expecting but I have one quibble. The sentence "In the West, our credit score is simple. It’s our ability to pay." is incorrect. Our credit score is actually our propensity to pay (and ability to pay is just one facet of that propensity). I know plenty of wealthy people with poor credit scores - some because they're poor at managing their money but there are a surprising number who simply want to hold onto their wealth (and don't care how their credit score is affected).
- PythonicAlpha 11y ago
  In the West -- at least in Western Germany -- the credit score is not your ability to pay. It is, how the score company things, how likely you will pay. I know, that for example, there street you live in is one factor used in your credit score. When you seldom have credits or the score company has to limited data about you, such information can be decisive. There are known cases in Germany, where well off people, who also regularly pay their bills got a bad score, just because the score company used some very limited data and statistical guesswork to simply guess a score.
visarga 11y ago
I foresaw this happening when the Snowden leaks broke out, but I am still surprised to see it come so soon. With so much data in their hands, it's not hard to predict that they would want to boil it down to a simple numerical score. Google does it with Page Rank and it decides everything with regard to search engine visibility. If the gov. took a log of someone's search engine queries, social networking posts, travels (GPS phone location logs), purchases and her list of friends it would be pretty easy to rate this person according to various criteria. They would need to have a dataset of people and their real world actions in order to train a classifier to predict scores for people based on just their digital traces. I don't know if it would work though, until tested. Maybe there is no correlation between what people post and what they do. The counterpoint is that people could use this same system to rate their actions before they act. Imagine a plugin that would warn you before you post some opinion on social networks or add someone to your friend list that it would decrease your rating by 10 points(!) Then you could select which actions you want to do and avoid reducing your score. That would make the rating system meaningless. The same system could be applied to rank people for their support for equality and freedom. It would make it hard for some to pose as freedom lovers when they act in a way that promotes discrimination. But either way, we will all act like politicians during political campaigns. Everything people would say would be weighed for the purpose of getting what they desire. And it doesn't stop here. The bubbling effect in Google, FB and other news feeds would be used to select which stories to show in order to manipulate everyone according to someone else's interests. This slowly morphs into a kind of soft dictatorship, where you are controlled without even realizing it. Even if it wouldn't work on each individual, it would work on average. That's why Facebook has become so important to elections lately. There is no political candidate that can ignore the FB tribe and its effects. It makes or breaks a campaign, and makes Zuck into a kind of huge power broker. But if a state wants to get its way no matter what (doing what China does now), FB would be a small child compared to the real world consequences they could unleash based on scoring.
- throwaway7767 11y ago
  > The counterpoint is that people could use this same system to rate their actions before they act. Imagine a plugin that would warn you before you post some opinion on social networks or add someone to your friend list that it would decrease your rating by 10 points(!) Then you could select which actions you want to do and avoid reducing your score. That would make the rating system meaningless. No, it would make the system highly effective; control of discourse through the exercise of "soft power". No need to proactively censor if you train people to do it themselves. This is the end result of the chilling effect mass surveillance has on human communications. And it's frightening.
erikb 11y ago
Why is this surprising? Everywhere every score is affected by what the people think about you who can influence the rating. That's why people work so hard to look good. That's why employees work unpaid nightshifts and extra hours without telling their bosses. That's why salespeople will laugh about your joke, no matter how bad it is.
- westiseast 11y ago
  That's very disingenuous - despite that this is sadly 'par for the course' in China, there is a world of difference between what you're talking about and what this article is suggesting. Imagine in 2009 you forwarded a story to a friend in a private conversation thread on a private computer using commercial software about a corrupt village official that everyone was talking about. Jump to 2016 and now that guy is the provincial governor and nobody in your extended family can get even a $100 loan for anything. Thats very, very different from sucking up to your boss by working extra hours for free.
methou 11y ago
This can't be more ridiculous, whoever wrote this article has no idea what Sesame score is, but I do agree with the author that the totalitarian government in China does have the intentions to associate not political opinions with credit system, they may wants to add morality in to account also. Sesame score is less than harmless, and to most extent, less than useless. China already has a political rating system it's called 档案(Personal Record File). Actually it has acted a crucial part in Chinese society, individual themselves aren't allowed to access their own file, and records inputs we given by their supervisors. You will have your record with you since elementary school, or even earlier. It was serious in 80s and early 90s where state owns everything, you can imagine how hard for an individual to live back in the old days. Since private firms became the mainstream and acts an important role in the Chinese economic structure, these files are no longer required for private owners. As of today, it's only important if you work for state owned units, but it still works, and alive. If the totalitarian government wants to make a political evaluation system, they can just make use of 档案, plus minus Internet surveillance data they gathered all the time. There's no need of data from any parts that Alibaba(NASDAQ:BABA) owns, Weibo(NASDAQ:WB) is the most influential social network in China, but a local government/state-owned companies easily take down any information they think inappropriate. They do have have read/write privileges to these information, not to mention other minor ones. As for data mining, not a problem, given the resource they have. Also they don't need something like a smokescreen, or justification for that, since there's already a similar system working, it's easier to maintain that start a new one. Sesame is merely a joke in the game of privacy-invasion, or credit scoring. Consumers don't care about their sesame score, since they can't make use of it. The imaginary party they 'are trying to serve' in the article, doesn't need them. Though the Aligroup tried to do some evil, but was too dubious and obvious. Last time they tried really hard to do some evil deeds and do crossed some lines by calling your friends telling them your purchases when you have overdue bills for sometime[1]. Things like such makes people question their capabilities of being evil, also ability to score people's credit correctly. [1] http://www.zhihu.com/question/35586955 http://www.zhihu.com/question/35586955 (Chinese)
amyjess 11y ago
By the way, people on reddit are already using this for blackmail purposes (or at least claiming to do so): https://np.reddit.com/r/CCJ2/comments/3nhx70/hugs_and_kisses_for_all_of_you/ https://np.reddit.com/r/CCJ2/comments/3nhx70/hugs_and_kisses...

158 points by peterkelly 11y ago

I am curious to see how that is calculated and what percentage it is of the 950 score. An absurd decision if you ask me.

jrometty 11y ago
i feel the exact same. this feels like something that would make most economists tear hair out.
prewett 11y ago
This is a perfectly rational decision, you just need to look at it from the value system making the decision. The Party's #1 goal is to remain in power. Pretty much everything they do is with that in mind. They also seem to assume that revolution is always knocking at the door. [1] Communism has had a long history of ideological coercion (it's pretty much a founding principle), so this sort of thing should come as no surprise. In fact, it's a lot more subtle than most. [2] [1] This may not be so far-fetched. Several years ago a Party document was released documenting 100k or 200k protests, ranging from small to large. When the bullet train derailed 3 or 5 years ago, Weibo went wild within minutes and ultimately some provincial Party officials took the fall. And the example of Arab Spring has got to be pretty scary. [2] I don't know if it is true anymore, but historically people were encouraged to rat out neighbors with ideological deficiencies. Not just in China, this is pretty much standard fare in totalitarian states.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  China always expecting revolution makes sense. It was founded by revolution.

1971genocide 11y ago

Does anyone know why pia is blocked in the UK ? Page is not opening.

subliminalpanda 11y ago
blocked in Oman as well.
vidarh 11y ago
Works fine for me.
mtgx 11y ago
Probably for the simple fact that it's a VPN service...so they blocked it with the "porn filter".
- prodmerc 11y ago
  Do they block domains with the keywords "privacy" "private" in them?
Nexxxeh 11y ago
It's always worked for me, on all the big five. I've just tested it now (having disconnected from my PIA VPN) and it worked fine. The VPN works too (obviously). I do sometimes find that switching to TCP (which should make it slower due to overhead) makes it faster, but it's ISP dependent, which implies the OpenVPN UDP traffic is being throttled.
Symbiote 11y ago
According to https://www.blocked.org.uk/ https://www.blocked.org.uk/ there's an SSL timeout with Sky and Virgin Media. I'm not sure how reliable that tool is, testing with ThePirateBay.gd gives "dnserror" for all the ISPs except one, but only adds a blocked since time for one (BT).

dang 11y ago

This is fascinating but also tendentious. Is the information reliable? If not, is there a more accurate source?

mtgx 11y ago
A source from earlier this year: http://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/china-rates-its-own-citizens-including-online-behaviour~a3979668/ http://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/china-rates-its-own-citi... And one from last year: https://chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/planning-outline-for-the-construction-of-a-social-credit-system-2014-2020/ https://chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/plan...

akramar 11y ago

> our credit score is simple... It’s measured from our assets, our income, and if we have bought on credit in the past and managed it well. Having worked in mortgage lending for many years, I'd like to point out that this isn't true. Your score (generated by the big 3 bureaus) does not take income or assets into account, it's based on credit utilization, payment history, and similar factors reported by your existing creditors and public records (BKs, judgments). That's why more factors go into extending you credit (credit card, mortgage, auto loan), than your score alone.

Falkvinge 11y ago
Fair enough. In Sweden (my native country), the primary factors for a good credit rating are assets, income, and the lack of mismanaged credit.
marincounty 11y ago
I still believe credit card companies redline communities in America. I have gotten better cc offers in the better--strike better; richer postal codes. I can't prove it though. One of my biggest mistake was using a credit card. I wish I threw out that first one I received upon graduation.
- Vraxx 11y ago
  As an aside to your main point, I am curious about why you have a complete disdain for using credit cards. I'm certainly not advocating using a credit card to spend beyond your limits, but intelligent application of a credit card can just net you assets. I'd also like to point out that I find the motives of credit card companies to encourage people to spend beyond their limits through temporary/immediate convenience deplorable, but that is not the only use case for these cards. For example I have a cash back credit card that I run every purchase that doesn't entail a fee for credit card usage through and pay it off immediately. I accrue/pay no interest, and still don't spend beyond my means, but I get a discount everywhere.
westiseast 11y ago
Exactly - hence why my wife who owns a house, a car and a thriving business couldn't get a loan, but our previously almost-bankrupt credit-addicted friend could. Because my wife had a single credit card she lost and forgot to pay the installments on @400 GBP credit, whereas our friend regularly paid hers off.

cm2187 11y ago

In a country where lobying for the wrong political opinions can land you in jail, it is actually rational to treat political opinions in the same way as potential criminal behavior from a credit scoring point of view. Particularly in a country where it also works the other way round, where having the right proximity with the party can be very lucrative.

zcbenz 11y ago

There is no evidence that the credit score is affected by political opinions, the only quote “Sesame Credit, however, also uses other data to calculate the scores, such as a person’s hobbies, interaction with friends, shopping habits and lifestyle.” says nothing about political opinions, and I can verify there is no related thing on Sesame Credit's website (Chinese is my native language). Also Sesame Credit is a private company, it is absolutely not equal to China.

United857 11y ago
In the US, the credit scores are maintained by private companies as well. Yet, they still can potentially affect your interactions with the government (e.g. applying for government jobs requiring security clearance).

Animats 11y ago

This seems to be Alibaba coming up with a credit scoring system for people who don't have banking relationships. Here's more info.[1] The People's Bank of China already has a more traditional credit rating system. But most people in China don't have a credit rating in any form.[2] This seems to be a scheme to get the rest of the population plugged into the system. There's a Government policy document on this "social credit system".[3] The Alibaba thing appears to be a trial under that system. Of course, it's a Government control thing, too. But China already had that - it's called a dangan. In China, many people really did have a Permanent Record. That's not as important as it used to be, because it was employer-maintained, mostly by state employers. With more private employers, it's less of an issue. This new system may become a modernized version of the dangan. China has a centuries-long history of keeping records on everyone. The old systems worked when there was very limited population mobility and job mobility. Now, with a more flexible workforce, the old system is getting an upgrade. [1] http://www.chinadailyasia.com/business/2015-06/09/content_15274221.html http://www.chinadailyasia.com/business/2015-06/09/content_15... [2] http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/05/08/why-there-are-no-credit-scores-in-china/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/05/08/why-there-are-no-credit-... [3] https://chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/planning-outline-for-the-construction-of-a-social-credit-system-2014-2020/ https://chinacopyrightandmedia.wordpress.com/2014/06/14/plan...

blazespin 11y ago
Eww ewww ewww! I never realized it was this bad. You have a funny idea of "worked". This seems like pure evil oppression. Long live freedom of speech. That being said we have a similar thing in the west, like clearance that you need for some government jobs(checks your connections to enemy states, drug use, general untrustworthy behavior). Fortunately, such government jobs isn't too big part of the economy. Ideally we'll keep it that way.
- nxb 11y ago
  But go talk to some people who've only ever experienced these types of business cultures, and they'll start listing for you a ton of reasons why it would be IMPOSSIBLE for the business world to operate as well or better, if it were any other way. These slavery books are still pretty common in parts of Europe too.

ryanlol 11y ago

It's sad to see Rick Falkvinge seemingly advocating for a company that claims it doesn't have to comply with subpoenas while operating in the US.

Falkvinge 11y ago
I'll support most entities - not only corporations - that put people's rights ahead of government agencies' data cleptocracy.
- ryanlol 11y ago
  Even the ones that grossly misrepresent the services they provide? PIAs marketing straight up exploits people who aren't tech savvy enough to understand that the promises they make are meaningless.

jensen123 11y ago

"Such people will also be barred from serving in certain high-status and influential positions, like government official, reporter, CEO, statistician, and similar." For all practical purposes, I don't think this would be so different from what we already have in the West for people like CEOs, government officials, reporters etc. These people seem to be kicked out as soon as they do something politically incorrect. They don't seem to have much freedom. For example, the CEO of Mozilla who gave like 1000 dollars to some anti-gay cause like 10 years ago, or the CEO of BP who hired gay escorts or John Derbyshire who wrote something unflattering about blacks. Ok, it's not the government doing it in the West, but the majority mob. But does it really matter whether it's some elitist government or the majority in a democracy doing it?

tluyben2 11y ago
But "These people seem to be kicked out as soon as they do something politically incorrect." in the West depends on the country/state/company/current political side of the gov etc what is considered 'politically (in)correct' and they would generally actually have to DO it, not only say something. I hear CEO's/reporters/etc 'in the west' making weird too right or too left-ish remarks and no-one cares. In China that seems all quite clear ; they would be out while here it really very much depends what they say/do, where they are and in what capacity.
ageek123 11y ago
Not "majority mob" -- more like "vocab minority mob"
calibraxis 11y ago
These poor, starving CEOs constantly kick people out of jobs for simply annoying them — it's called "firing". Tyranny of the corporate mob bosses.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
blumkvist 11y ago
The CEO of the world's biggest company by market cap. was revealed gay by accident on TV and nothing happened.

legulere 11y ago

> And at 750, you get a similar fast track to a coveted Schengen visa. It's a visa to Luxembourg according to the link, so Luxembourg needs to be the main place to stay. Also not really strange that they will take a credit score. Usually (when applying to a German visa as someone from mainland China) you need to show that you have a steady income and need to provide bank account statements that show that you have enough money to sustain yourself. It also criticizes that other people have an influence over the credit score. This is done because there's not enough data and regularly happens in other countries (e.g. taking into account where you live). That it will be used for political control is certainly a valid fear, but it doesn't seem to be reality yet like claimed in the article.

jmnicolas 11y ago

In France there's no such thing as the credit score. Of course banks probably (certainly) have something to rate their customers, but it's not public. And from what I can read about the credit score, I don't think we're missing much.

Pyxl101 11y ago
So, how do banks decide how much to loan you, if you want a loan, or at what interest rate? My history of being responsible with debt enables me to borrow large amounts of money while putting a small percentage down, and paying a small percentage interest (3.375%) on the principal. Banks can compete to offer better rates or terms on a loan like that (home mortgage, USA). Some notion of a credit score, or a person's general creditworthiness is necessary for there to be competition in the loan market. Otherwise how would it work - banks are equally willing to loan to all people, despite their income, savings, and history of paying back loans reliably? It can be abused but it generally seems to promote an efficient marketplace for loans.
- mziel 11y ago
  I'm not French, but: http://blog.sextantproperties.com/2012/08/21/the-positives-of-having-no-credit-check-in-france/ http://blog.sextantproperties.com/2012/08/21/the-positives-o... >However, if you apply for a credit or mortgage in France, all you will have to provide is your last 3-month bank statements and the last 3 month pay slips (or last 3 year tax returns). It is that simple. There is no credit report or score for you to worry about.
- prodmerc 11y ago
  Probably the old fashioned way - by looking at employment history (salary, length of employment, etc.), savings and whatever assets you have (which you can potentially sell to give them their money back in case something happens). Basically, everything besides a history of paying back loans :-). Those lacking (some of) these things get smaller loans/bigger interest rates or don't get a loan at all...
- spinchange 11y ago

ck2 11y ago

In China your freedom or even your lifespan might be affected by your political opinions.

p4sh4 11y ago

"But China has already announced that it, or something very like it, will become mandatory from 2020." Any source besides this? http://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/china-rates-its-own-citizens-including-online-behaviour~a3979668/ http://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/china-rates-its-own-citi...

geldedus 11y ago

Of course it is. China is a communist country, where's the news? This is how communist countries work.

xiaq 11y ago

> If you’re buying things that the regime appreciates, like dishwashers and baby supplies, your credit score increases. If you’re buying videogames, your score takes a negative hit. > But China has already announced that it, or something very like it, will become mandatory from 2020. > But the kicker is that if any of your friends do this — publish opinions without prior permission, or report accurate but embarrassing news — your score will also deteriorate. Why should I believe those things instead of all those propaganda nonsense? A big "[citation needed]" label is missing beside every sentence in this article...

blisterpeanuts 11y ago

It seems to me that this credit score system--if real--would ultimately be self-defeating, for two reasons. First, among a cynical and rebellious youth population, a low score would become a prestigious thing, proof of your courage and gutsy attitude, a kind of street cred. Second, it would limit economic activity. If you cut off millions of people from car loans on the basis of their questionable postings or online affiliations, the ones really hurt will be the banks and car companies. Idiotic, and would lead to many companies disregarding the "credit" scores. I don't see this as workable, though it does sound like something the government would like to have.

westiseast 11y ago
Not sure what your understanding of China is, but I want to correct your assumption of (1). Most Chinese youth arent rebellious in any substantial way. They've grown up in an environment that is strongly Confucian, and there isn't really this "be what you want to be, break free, live life, freedom of youth" narrative that we have in most of the developed world. Kids are very very unrebellious and I doubt there would grow a culture of 'showing off' your bad credit score. On the 2nd point, I'm not sure either. The political element of this is likely to be a small factor, not a prime one. The government tends to be very specific these days about targeting people who are activists rather than cracking down on anyone who says anything. Finally, people in China are generally used to this kind of BS, and whether consciously or through 'brainwashing', they don't tend to randomly spout political positions or anti-government rhetoric unless they know they are on safe ground. I don't mean it won't be an oppressive, inefficient, opaque and abused system, just that it won't result in millions being locked out of loans or the economy suffering that much.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  I am in agreement. Rule of law is a predictable stat that creditors like to evaluate risk. Thing is, China's application of law can be very political. So while creditors can't predict that the legal system will work as expected like in America or Western Europe, they can predict that even economically successful political dissidents are at a measurable risk to losing everything very quickly.

PythonicAlpha 11y ago

A similar thing could happen in the west. Some time ago, it was in the news, that Facebook got a patent on credit scoring depending on your friends and social network. With the wrong (maybe leftist or file-sharing) friends, your credit score could drop in the near future.

smoyer 11y ago

Did anyone else reading the headline expect some equivalent to "In Soviet Russia ..."? The article is a bit more informative than I was expecting but I have one quibble. The sentence "In the West, our credit score is simple. It’s our ability to pay." is incorrect. Our credit score is actually our propensity to pay (and ability to pay is just one facet of that propensity). I know plenty of wealthy people with poor credit scores - some because they're poor at managing their money but there are a surprising number who simply want to hold onto their wealth (and don't care how their credit score is affected).

PythonicAlpha 11y ago
In the West -- at least in Western Germany -- the credit score is not your ability to pay. It is, how the score company things, how likely you will pay. I know, that for example, there street you live in is one factor used in your credit score. When you seldom have credits or the score company has to limited data about you, such information can be decisive. There are known cases in Germany, where well off people, who also regularly pay their bills got a bad score, just because the score company used some very limited data and statistical guesswork to simply guess a score.

visarga 11y ago

I foresaw this happening when the Snowden leaks broke out, but I am still surprised to see it come so soon. With so much data in their hands, it's not hard to predict that they would want to boil it down to a simple numerical score. Google does it with Page Rank and it decides everything with regard to search engine visibility. If the gov. took a log of someone's search engine queries, social networking posts, travels (GPS phone location logs), purchases and her list of friends it would be pretty easy to rate this person according to various criteria. They would need to have a dataset of people and their real world actions in order to train a classifier to predict scores for people based on just their digital traces. I don't know if it would work though, until tested. Maybe there is no correlation between what people post and what they do. The counterpoint is that people could use this same system to rate their actions before they act. Imagine a plugin that would warn you before you post some opinion on social networks or add someone to your friend list that it would decrease your rating by 10 points(!) Then you could select which actions you want to do and avoid reducing your score. That would make the rating system meaningless. The same system could be applied to rank people for their support for equality and freedom. It would make it hard for some to pose as freedom lovers when they act in a way that promotes discrimination. But either way, we will all act like politicians during political campaigns. Everything people would say would be weighed for the purpose of getting what they desire. And it doesn't stop here. The bubbling effect in Google, FB and other news feeds would be used to select which stories to show in order to manipulate everyone according to someone else's interests. This slowly morphs into a kind of soft dictatorship, where you are controlled without even realizing it. Even if it wouldn't work on each individual, it would work on average. That's why Facebook has become so important to elections lately. There is no political candidate that can ignore the FB tribe and its effects. It makes or breaks a campaign, and makes Zuck into a kind of huge power broker. But if a state wants to get its way no matter what (doing what China does now), FB would be a small child compared to the real world consequences they could unleash based on scoring.

throwaway7767 11y ago
> The counterpoint is that people could use this same system to rate their actions before they act. Imagine a plugin that would warn you before you post some opinion on social networks or add someone to your friend list that it would decrease your rating by 10 points(!) Then you could select which actions you want to do and avoid reducing your score. That would make the rating system meaningless. No, it would make the system highly effective; control of discourse through the exercise of "soft power". No need to proactively censor if you train people to do it themselves. This is the end result of the chilling effect mass surveillance has on human communications. And it's frightening.

erikb 11y ago

Why is this surprising? Everywhere every score is affected by what the people think about you who can influence the rating. That's why people work so hard to look good. That's why employees work unpaid nightshifts and extra hours without telling their bosses. That's why salespeople will laugh about your joke, no matter how bad it is.

westiseast 11y ago
That's very disingenuous - despite that this is sadly 'par for the course' in China, there is a world of difference between what you're talking about and what this article is suggesting. Imagine in 2009 you forwarded a story to a friend in a private conversation thread on a private computer using commercial software about a corrupt village official that everyone was talking about. Jump to 2016 and now that guy is the provincial governor and nobody in your extended family can get even a $100 loan for anything. Thats very, very different from sucking up to your boss by working extra hours for free.

methou 11y ago

This can't be more ridiculous, whoever wrote this article has no idea what Sesame score is, but I do agree with the author that the totalitarian government in China does have the intentions to associate not political opinions with credit system, they may wants to add morality in to account also. Sesame score is less than harmless, and to most extent, less than useless. China already has a political rating system it's called 档案(Personal Record File). Actually it has acted a crucial part in Chinese society, individual themselves aren't allowed to access their own file, and records inputs we given by their supervisors. You will have your record with you since elementary school, or even earlier. It was serious in 80s and early 90s where state owns everything, you can imagine how hard for an individual to live back in the old days. Since private firms became the mainstream and acts an important role in the Chinese economic structure, these files are no longer required for private owners. As of today, it's only important if you work for state owned units, but it still works, and alive. If the totalitarian government wants to make a political evaluation system, they can just make use of 档案, plus minus Internet surveillance data they gathered all the time. There's no need of data from any parts that Alibaba(NASDAQ:BABA) owns, Weibo(NASDAQ:WB) is the most influential social network in China, but a local government/state-owned companies easily take down any information they think inappropriate. They do have have read/write privileges to these information, not to mention other minor ones. As for data mining, not a problem, given the resource they have. Also they don't need something like a smokescreen, or justification for that, since there's already a similar system working, it's easier to maintain that start a new one. Sesame is merely a joke in the game of privacy-invasion, or credit scoring. Consumers don't care about their sesame score, since they can't make use of it. The imaginary party they 'are trying to serve' in the article, doesn't need them. Though the Aligroup tried to do some evil, but was too dubious and obvious. Last time they tried really hard to do some evil deeds and do crossed some lines by calling your friends telling them your purchases when you have overdue bills for sometime[1]. Things like such makes people question their capabilities of being evil, also ability to score people's credit correctly. [1] http://www.zhihu.com/question/35586955 http://www.zhihu.com/question/35586955 (Chinese)

amyjess 11y ago

By the way, people on reddit are already using this for blackmail purposes (or at least claiming to do so): https://np.reddit.com/r/CCJ2/comments/3nhx70/hugs_and_kisses_for_all_of_you/ https://np.reddit.com/r/CCJ2/comments/3nhx70/hugs_and_kisses...