China’s experiment in ranking and monitoring citizens has started

I understand the inclination to do this - I think it&#x27;s natural to want to live in a meritocracy. But I just can&#x27;t image this not backfiring.<p>The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

They can apply this same system to outsiders too as long as they can buy or gather the data.<p>They could then use this inside of countries other than China, where they own increasing numbers of business interests including employers.<p>So this will start affecting behaviors even of non-Chinese people as people anticipate their behavior getting put into the system at some date in the future. Even if the system isn’t in place here yet.<p>It’s like a preview version of the immortal dictator Elon Musk talks about in the new “Do You Trust This Computer” movie.

&gt; Yang, who asked that her real name not be used, ... has no privacy-related concerns. “I trust the government,” she says. “Who else can you trust if not them?”<p>Irony obviously not her strong point.

Sounds like in part, it is trying to replace the lost moral compass of Chinese society. But centralising moral authority was always a bad idea.

We in &quot;the west&quot; or whatnot need to watch out for the corporate equivalents of this, including credit scores, particularly coming from the financial sectors.<p>There&#x27;s just a lot of opportunities these days, with all the data floating around and our increasing ability to calculate probabilities of arbitrary things about people from large enough datasets.<p>One side of this is disadvantage. Credit scores are an attempt to rank people by probability of default. A modern version of a credit scores would be even more black box. There are serious problems of fairness with this. You can probably calculate some usable credit score based on where you were born and to who.<p>Another side of such scores is the punitive side. This will affect your credit score, so stay inline. Essentially it&#x27;s a lightweight proprietary justice system.<p>Insurance generally works in a similar way. Rental markets can too, and agents will aggregate blacklists which can then be used punitively. Policing is now using a lot more statistical techniques. Employers would probably like a commercial version of the systems police use.<p>Treating people as statistical objects in this way... Its dehumanising, it&#x27;s discriminatory and it isn&#x27;t rule of law.

There&#x27;s an interesting video from Extra Credits about this. It&#x27;s based on early announcements and repeats some of the popular points, but it addresses the gamification and social pressure side of the issue which I haven&#x27;t seen discussed that much elsewhere. I recommend watching: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;lHcTKWiZ8sI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;lHcTKWiZ8sI</a>

Any word on weather foreigners will be ranked too? What about Chinese living abroad? I have lots of Chinese coworkers who sometimes get stuck in China when their visas get checked. I wonder if this will cause that to happen more often - I imagine that living abroad isn’t good for your score.

I’m for enlightened meritocracy, but I highly doubt that a centralized government initiative is going to get the score right on a multi-variate analysis (and will probably miss some important variables). This sounds quite chilling. It’ll only be a matter of time before this extends beyond China’s boarders to citizens in other countries. Will China limit your right to travel or do business by putting pressure on smaller governments?

This feels like a modern day version of the PRC system where each residential block had a concierge (spy) who would spy on and denounce residents, and a group discussion session about behavior. Sorry, it’s been so many years that I can’t remember what this was called

I think I saw this Black Mirror episode.

Isn&#x27;t money a form of ranking in our society in this style?

Of course the Citizen&#x27;s Office for this incredibly modern community still uses Windows XP (and Windows 7).

Didn&#x27;t Xi Jinping watch the Simpsons episode where they installed cameras all over Springfield?

it&#x27;s harder and harder to live in china now.

Let the games begin!

&gt; The West has social credit scoring: money<p>??? as opposed to China which has no money??<p>China&#x27;s credit system is paired with dictatorship, censorship, disappearance, and killing. Nowhere near the similarities with West<p>Young Chinese activist missing after sharing plan to wear ‘Xitler’ t-shirt in public<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hongkongfp.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;11&#x2F;03&#x2F;young-chinese-activist-missing-after-sharing-plan-to-wear-xitler-t-shirt-on-cpc-anniversary-report&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hongkongfp.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;11&#x2F;03&#x2F;young-chinese-activist...</a>

There&#x27;s alot of international people posting on hacker news, and alot of them have anti-US bias. They wish China would be the one that takes over US as the superpower of the world. for those people I have a comment<p>You like posting political views on the internet right? Imagine China is the sole superpower of the world that defeated the democracies of the world. You would be ranked, censored, monitored, caught, jailed, tortured, and killed.

How much time does China left? 10? 20? 40 years? before becoming utterly uncompetitive?

So basically they want to take the private credit system and make it public and accountable. What’s wrong with this, exactly?

I&#x27;m not sure if irony is the correct word here, but I do find it funny how the &quot;unpopular&quot; comments in this thread have been faded to gray.

Commentary on China&#x27;s social credit system so often fails to note the many parallels in western societies.<p>* The West has social credit scoring: money. A key principle of market economies is that accruing money is the just reward for contributing to society. Your bank account is your social credit score - yet we all know that many people get rich without rendering a useful service to society.<p>* Intelligence agencies keep security risk scores for every citizen. Just like China&#x27;s policy decisions, there is almost no democratic oversight over how security services assign these scores.<p>* Credit ratings profoundly influence your life, for example, where you live depends on your ability on the mortgage a bank will offer you. These scores have almost no democratic oversight, just like China&#x27;s policy decisions.<p>China is being radically transparent with its social credit system when compared with the West&#x27;s unacknowledged or under-scrutinised scoring systems.

Although this new scheme has the potential for punishing dissidents, I oddly don&#x27;t find it too bothersome. Five years ago this idea would have seriously creeped me out. What has changed? To some degree I feel numbed and desensitized by my own government (USA) with TSA searching laptops and social media at borders, near total special interest control of &quot;news&quot; media, and the general feeling that now more than in the past the rich and powerful can just about get away with whatever they want.<p>EDIT: sorry, I didn’t express myself very well: I don’t approve of the proposed system in China, but given what is happening in the USA I don;t feel like criticizing other countries.