As usual I’m turning to lemmy to get answers/resources on this before I make assumptions and do further reading myself.
Holidays have started and with that comes family discussions on topics such as China having a socials points system which dictates (apparently) everything from you being able to buy a house or enrolling your child into a good school.
Is this true or not? I’ve heard mixed responses and would love more explanations.
basically the whole thing is made up, two great articles from a mainstream source
Ok, so when people talk about the “Social Credit” system, they usually mean some combination of two things:
- Alibaba’s “Sesame Credit”
- The actual Social Credit System
The first one is Alibaba’s opt-in credit scoring system that functions similarly to the credit scores in the US, they basically measure how much you spend and borrow, and whether you repay your loans on time or not. It’s completely optional and offers discounts and other perks in Alibaba’s ecosystem with a high score.
The second is a system that is primarily designed to enforce regulations on buisnesses. Back in the early 2000s, there were a bunch of health scandals around Chinese dairy companies and other food products, as well as corporate corruption and lack of transparency more generally. So this “Social Credit” basically measures how compliant and transparent these companies are. Originally it was debated on whether it should be extended to individuals, but that basically never materialized.
These have nothing to do with each other, but people in the west often combine the two and make some weird extrapolations to make it sound all encompassing, when it really isn’t. In fact, a study (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1461444819826402) showed that 80% of Chinese citizens approved of the Social Credit system, and only 1% expressed any disapproval at all.
Originally it was debated on whether it should be extended to individuals, but that basically never materialized
from what i understand, a watered-down version was briefly trialed in a couple of cities but abandoned
Nope. There is no centralized “social credit” system. There are cases where owners of dodgy businesses that owe lots of money or were involved in malfeasance have been cut off from Flights and Trains but those were imposed by a court. They do have regular credit scores but they are nowhere as nebulous or shady as western ones.
When people bring up the “social credit” thing just ask them if they know their credit rating. Then ask them if they know that just checking their credit rating it can make it worse or that landlords can and often do demand a credit check and employers are allowed to ask for a credit check. Then ask them if being penalized for antisocial behavior sounds bad compared to a automated financial credit system that you aren’t even allowed to check without hurting your rating. “everything bad you have heard about China’s social credit system is true multiplied by ten in usa but it does not exist in China”
Is this true or not? I’ve heard mixed responses
Have you heard anything to support this? The strongest support I can find for these claims is redditors saying something like “-50 social credit points” to a comment saying “china bad”. There has never been any credible evidence of the evil CCP monitoring your everyday speech and behaviour to adjust these supposed social credit points. It is also not explained what the implication of having a bad “social credit” are. All of the stuff avoids any concrete details and asks you to fill in the blanks with whatever biases you might have.
