To understand the Chinese system you need to understand where legitimacy comes from in China. The Chinese government employs 50m people, it is a participatory s

To understand the Chinese system you need to understand where legitimacy comes from in China. The Chinese government employs 50m people, it is a participatory state - everyone will know someone employed by the government. Personal obligations mesh people together to the state, migration and demographic change have disrupted connections and threaten this mechanism of legitimacy - the social credit system could be seen as a reaction and reinforcement of this. I think it is important that people try and see what is going on as it is rather than as a caricature because otherwise the lessons will be lost in the noise, in this case I think that the Equifax / capitalist system is remarkably similar to the Chinese system. Not only are people constrained by the predictions of loan repayment (and by the way that's a can of worms in terms of how & what) but also people are tracked and shamed by their opinions and habits online; and these are wilfully misquoted and misinterpreted to generate social constraints (the recent story about the estate agent who was falsely accused as a bigot and an adulterer : http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2018/07/when-a-stranger-decides-to-destroy-your-life/ http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2018/07/when-a-stranger-decides-to-...) My concern is that the truly evil have stealth and pretence on their side, while people who are developing the behaviours and norms that will be necessary for us to cope with the societal challenges we face - for example people who espouse radical anti-consumerism - may be driven out of debate by the norms and norm maintenance mechanisms that are accidentally and with good intention being developed in the west.