5 ms·

For now at least, China's citizens are embracing social-credit systems

40 points by petethomas 8y ago

droithomme 8y ago
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 8y ago
  Oh, not again, this narative seems to be very popular, but it's based on ignorance.
- DeonPenny 8y ago
  Severe whataboutism
Proven 8y ago
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.
est 8y ago
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.
- teekert 8y ago
  I'm certainly no expert but isn't it only cheating by western standards? Wouldn't it be interesting to have a culture that doesn't conform to that standard and see how it fares? Imho it's like a society where everything is GPL-ed, is it really so wrong? Sure social credit etc are horrible imo but I fail to see that the copying of smart ideas without punishment is inherently wrong. It's non-capitalistic, but inherently wrong? I dont agree with that. Sure, one (sentient individual) should never be forced to share ideas (or anything for that matter, unless one chooses to deny others that right), but to battle that with government granted monopolies... hmm, idk... I feel like we should be a bit more open-minded.
  - RandomTisk 8y ago
    Maybe I'm reading "cheating" too literally but I can't imagine any scenario where I would want someone's expertise who copied other's work instead of creating the work themselves. At best I temporarily have a small lead, at worst I'll get sued or kill someone through hiring incompetence.
    - lozenge 8y ago
      Cheating is ingrained into the culture. Two examples: if you visit an ancient building, it will have been rebuilt identically 7-8 times on the same spot (but still be considered the same building). When you were an apprentice craftsman in China, your goal was to make work indistinguishable from the master, at which point you would graduate and start making your own furniture/whatever it was.
  - seniorivn 8y ago
    IP theft is not just copying the idea, its stealing of non public documents/prototypes that helps you implement the same product without as much research.
  - vbtemp 8y ago
    This soft bigotry against Chinese culture is really tiring already. Chinese culture and people are all over the world: America, southeast Asia, singapore, and so many other places... To think that cheating and IP theft and scams is somehow part of Chinese culture or that these are virtues unqiue to these exotic orientals and we should drop our Western preconceptions is so unbelievably condescending... And how offensive to Chinese people, both in China and overseas, who earn their achievements though their honest and diligent labor, the kind of work we value here too.
onion2k 8y ago
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 8y ago
  In normal countries you have a strong civil society & consumer associations that have the teeth to bite these scammers.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    And more importantly, strong entrepreneurship so you have many companies offering similar products, so that you can decide to "punish" with your wallet the companies that deceive you. It goes hand in hand.
    - taurath 8y ago
      That works for sugar water companies but private security not so much, unless you have a very very large wallet.
  - ves 8y ago
abc-xyz 8y ago
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.
- 2stop 8y ago
  > why weren't the Germans resisting Hitler's government? Hitler was hugely popular within Germany, he took poor exploiting this popularity democratically (later which he removed) but it isn't really comparable to China's situation. I'm confused about why you feel worried? I don't think I've ever heard of China monitoring English websites nor building profiles of people with critical views (outside of China). They definitely do this to people who interact within China, but really you are worried OUTSIDE of China? I find that the lack of public outcry is essentially political apathy mixed with a healthy amount of fear. China (and Chinese) are generating a huge amount of wealth, why would they fight that? If they can build their family and their wealth, I think beyond those two things, culturally they are apathetic to the rest of things.
- thrwy_01 8y ago
  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.
mishurov 8y ago
Thoughtcrime is now being called Hate Speech by leftist witch hunters from the Ministry of Love.
new_here 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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 8y ago
      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).
visarga 8y ago
> 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.
jcbrand 8y ago
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.
abhiminator 8y ago
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
sonnyblarney 8y ago
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.
alextooter 8y ago
Please don't represent us.What you doing is same as Big Brother.
beaker52 8y ago
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.
PakG1 8y ago
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.

40 points by petethomas 8y ago

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 8y ago
Oh, not again, this narative seems to be very popular, but it's based on ignorance.
DeonPenny 8y ago
Severe whataboutism

Proven 8y ago

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.

est 8y ago

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.

teekert 8y ago
I'm certainly no expert but isn't it only cheating by western standards? Wouldn't it be interesting to have a culture that doesn't conform to that standard and see how it fares? Imho it's like a society where everything is GPL-ed, is it really so wrong? Sure social credit etc are horrible imo but I fail to see that the copying of smart ideas without punishment is inherently wrong. It's non-capitalistic, but inherently wrong? I dont agree with that. Sure, one (sentient individual) should never be forced to share ideas (or anything for that matter, unless one chooses to deny others that right), but to battle that with government granted monopolies... hmm, idk... I feel like we should be a bit more open-minded.
- RandomTisk 8y ago
  Maybe I'm reading "cheating" too literally but I can't imagine any scenario where I would want someone's expertise who copied other's work instead of creating the work themselves. At best I temporarily have a small lead, at worst I'll get sued or kill someone through hiring incompetence.
  - lozenge 8y ago
    Cheating is ingrained into the culture. Two examples: if you visit an ancient building, it will have been rebuilt identically 7-8 times on the same spot (but still be considered the same building). When you were an apprentice craftsman in China, your goal was to make work indistinguishable from the master, at which point you would graduate and start making your own furniture/whatever it was.
- seniorivn 8y ago
  IP theft is not just copying the idea, its stealing of non public documents/prototypes that helps you implement the same product without as much research.
- vbtemp 8y ago
  This soft bigotry against Chinese culture is really tiring already. Chinese culture and people are all over the world: America, southeast Asia, singapore, and so many other places... To think that cheating and IP theft and scams is somehow part of Chinese culture or that these are virtues unqiue to these exotic orientals and we should drop our Western preconceptions is so unbelievably condescending... And how offensive to Chinese people, both in China and overseas, who earn their achievements though their honest and diligent labor, the kind of work we value here too.

onion2k 8y ago

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 8y ago
In normal countries you have a strong civil society & consumer associations that have the teeth to bite these scammers.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  And more importantly, strong entrepreneurship so you have many companies offering similar products, so that you can decide to "punish" with your wallet the companies that deceive you. It goes hand in hand.
  - taurath 8y ago
    That works for sugar water companies but private security not so much, unless you have a very very large wallet.
- ves 8y ago

abc-xyz 8y ago

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.

2stop 8y ago
> why weren't the Germans resisting Hitler's government? Hitler was hugely popular within Germany, he took poor exploiting this popularity democratically (later which he removed) but it isn't really comparable to China's situation. I'm confused about why you feel worried? I don't think I've ever heard of China monitoring English websites nor building profiles of people with critical views (outside of China). They definitely do this to people who interact within China, but really you are worried OUTSIDE of China? I find that the lack of public outcry is essentially political apathy mixed with a healthy amount of fear. China (and Chinese) are generating a huge amount of wealth, why would they fight that? If they can build their family and their wealth, I think beyond those two things, culturally they are apathetic to the rest of things.
thrwy_01 8y ago
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.

mishurov 8y ago

Thoughtcrime is now being called Hate Speech by leftist witch hunters from the Ministry of Love.

new_here 8y ago

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 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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).

visarga 8y ago

> 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.

jcbrand 8y ago

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.

abhiminator 8y ago

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

sonnyblarney 8y ago

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.

alextooter 8y ago

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

beaker52 8y ago

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.

PakG1 8y ago

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.