I don't think it's ok in the sense that it's not some kind of acceptable trade-off to make for a society-wide benefit or something like that, but I think it's o

I don't think it's ok in the sense that it's not some kind of acceptable trade-off to make for a society-wide benefit or something like that, but I think it's ok in the sense that it's just a minor annoyance that doesn't make life unlivable. China is not some kind of dystopian hellhole where citizens constantly feel the government's boot on their necks. The government doesn't allow people to express themselves freely, but that doesn't stop many from doing it anyway. There simply aren't enough police officers to react to every violation. It doesn't exactly cow people into submission. My friend obviously wasn't praising the government when he told me how they tried to make him shut up. I think you should be careful not to assume too much about life in a foreign country you haven't experienced for yourself. Case in point, you talk about the social credit system as if it were operational, maybe even back then. In reality, nation-wide rollout is planned for this year, and many details are still up in the air. There are local pilot projects, but all of them are different and many are limited to providing data on companies (often not much, essentially just putting the company register online). Any stories you may have heard about people being punished by the social credit system are actually low-tech solutions without scores that have been rebranded, presumably so someone can claim to be on schedule implementing the master plan.