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CHINA’S “SOCIAL

CREDIT SYSTEM” WILL

RATE HOW VALUABLE

YOU ARE AS A HUMAN

IN A CONTENTIOUS The idea first appeared in a document for a number of services, including the Both Rapid Finance and Sesame Credit
WORLD FIRST, from the State Council of China kinds of jobs or mortgages they can get, have access to intimidating quantities
CHINA PLANS published in June 2014. It is a and it also impacts what schools their of data, the former through its WeChat
children qualify for. In this respect, the
messaging app (at present with 850
technological advancement so shocking
TO IMPLEMENT to modern-minded paradigms that many SCS resembles one of the most chilling million active users) and the latter
A SOCIAL can do little but sit back in defeatist episodes from Black Mirror’s third through its AliPay payment service.
CREDIT SYSTEM chagrin as science fiction shows us its season. Incidentally, the show isn’t really According to local media, Tencent’s
(OFFICIALLY darker side. known as a “feel-good” flick. It presents SCS comes with its QQ chat app, where
an individual’s score comes in a range
REFERRED TO AS various dystopian views of society, but
The SCS seems relatively simple. China’s SCS proves reality is darker than between 300 and 850 and is broken
A SOCIAL CREDIT Every citizen in China, which now has fiction. down into five sub-categories: social
SCORE OR SCS) BY numbers swelling to well over 1.3 connections, consumption behavior,
2020. billion, would be given a score that, as This “service” isn’t slated to go full- security, wealth, and compliance.
a matter of public record, is available swing until 2020, but China has already
for all to see. This citizen score comes started a voluntary implementation of POSITIVE (AND NEGATIVE)
from monitoring an individual’s social the SCS by partnering with a number of REINFORCEMENT
behavior from their spending habits and private companies in order to iron out
how regularly they pay bills, to their the algorithmic details needed for such a Proponents of the SCS see this as an
social interactions and it’ll become the large-scale, data-driven system. opportunity to improve on some of the
basis of that person’s trustworthiness, The companies that are implementing state’s services. Some argue that this
which would also be publicly ranked. SCS include China Rapid Finance, would give Chinese citizens much-
which is a partner of social network needed access to financial services.
This actually sounds worse than an giant Tencent, and Sesame Credit, a The government also says that this
Orwellian nightmare. subsidiary of Alibaba affiliate company will “allow the trustworthy to roam
A citizen’s score affects their eligibility Ant Financial Services Group (AFSG). everywhere under heaven while making