Beijing To Judge Every Resident Based on Behavior by End of 2020 (bloomberg.com)

China's plan to judge each of its 1.3 billion people based on their social behavior is moving a step closer to reality, with Beijing set to adopt a lifelong points program by 2021 that assigns personalized ratings for each resident. From a report: The capital city will pool data from several departments to reward and punish some 22 million citizens based on their actions and reputations by the end of 2020, according to a plan posted on the Beijing municipal government's website this week. Those with better so-called social credit will get "green channel" benefits while those who violate laws will find life more difficult. The Beijing project will improve blacklist systems so that those deemed untrustworthy will be "unable to move even a single step," according to the government's plan. Xinhua reported on the proposal Tuesday, while the report posted on the municipal government's website is dated July 18.

Comments

Black Mirror - Nosedive

[Anonymous Coward]

BM did an episode on this.

Sounds like a great fucking system.

Remind me why we're doing business with these people again?

Re:Black Mirror - Nosedive

[PopeRatzo]

Remind me why we're doing business with these people again?

Are you joking? We do business in places where they abduct American residents, torture them, chop them up into pieces and dissolve them in acid.

Because there's money to be made.

Re:Black Mirror - Nosedive

[swillden]

Only difference is in the US private companies keep scores on you instead of the government.

Well, the other difference is that the only credit score they track is about, well, credit -- your ability to borrow money and otherwise incur future debts. And it's not some judgment on your overall fitness for society, it's just a judgment on how likely you are to pay what you owe.

This "other difference" is enormous. So big that they aren't remotely the same things at all.

The closest thing the US has to this social credit score is a criminal record. If you are convicted of a crime, especially a felony, then the government keeps track of that, and it will affect your ability to get a job, own a job, vote (in most states), etc. And if your crime was sexual in nature, it will affect where you're allowed to live and work as well. What makes this particularly nasty is that prosecutors are really good at extracting confessions and pleas of guilt even from innocent people.

Re:Black Mirror - Nosedive

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, you will soon have this system too. Cars have mandatory GPS, so they will first start at car insurance based on your GPS recorded driving habits. Then they will combine it with traffic control to see if you are speeding/driving on red. Then it will naturally evolve to everyone having the chip (which has been discussed lately a lot) and that will evolve into everyone being tracked throughout the city instead of just your work or your home. And so on and so on.

And you will be rated based on all of those things and your social media use etc.

I wish i was kidding, but i'm not.

Re:Black Mirror - Nosedive

[jbmartin6]

You are right that it is no where near the scale of what China is implementing, but credit scores get used for a good number of non-credit decisions such as getting a job.

The Book of Lord Shang

[astrofurter]

"A state where uniformity of purpose has been established for one year, will be strong for ten years; where uniformity of purpose has been established for ten years, it will be strong for a hundred years, where uniformity of purpose has been established for a hundred years, it will be strong for a thousand years; and a state which has been strong for a thousand years will attain supremacy."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

Re:The Book of Lord Shang

[Shazatoga]

Great and all until a black swan arrives and invalidates the current structure. Democracies (inc. Republics), for all their flaws, can face a black swan or two as they are designed to handle change. They aren't perfect (Rome's refusal to embrace change and to enfranchise the Italians led to the populist dictatorship of the Caesars), but tend to be more anti-fragile than the alternatives.

Re:The Book of Lord Shang

[LaughingRadish]

A Roman poet wrote "a rare bird in the lands and very much like a black swan". At the time, black swans were thought to not exist. In the 1500s, the phrase "black swan" was a common expression that something was impossible. Then in 1697, Dutch explorers saw black swans in Western Australia. The phrase then morphed into an expression that a perceived impossibility might later be disproven.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Should work flawlessly

[Shazatoga]

Good thing bureaucrats are incorruptible and would never abuse the system for a bribe or petty revenge. /s This will be one of the greatest hacking targets in the world. Not to mention that putting the wellbeing of 1.4 billion people into a database means that even a small error in an edge case in the code can screw millions of people.

Beijing is creating its own biggest headache

[Anonymous Coward]

Creating an entire subset of your society that is so locked out of daily life that they can't even function is a very, very quick way to incite organized resistance - not just out of ideological opposition, but from pure survival necessity. Blacklisted people will band together with blacklisted people to set up a parallel society so they can simply function day to day. Food? Housing? Transportation? You can't freeze out even 5% of the population from that and keep it contained.

If they were just making life difficult, that would be one thing, but it sounds like the Chicoms have gone so overboard that they won't be able to even eat or sleep under a roof. Watch it blow up.

Re:Beijing is creating its own biggest headache

[Anonymous Coward]

America does that with felony convictions in the United States, and no one cares because convicted felons "did something bad"...well, people who get blacklisted in China will be considered to have done something bad by Chinese standards. Nothing will happen except create a nice pool of easily exploitable people.

Re:Beijing is creating its own biggest headache

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, illegal immigrants could always just, you know, not come here...The Chinese in China don't have a choice.

We had all that in the west

[rsilvergun]

Know how we solved it? Mostly cops giving out tickets. The scammers got arrested. Same results, maybe better, and no massive and terrifying misuse of government power.

China's problem is they treat their working class like crap. This is the kind of crap you have to resort to when you need to keep people from Unionizing.

We're revoking their most favorite nation status

[rsilvergun]

any day now. Yep. Any day now. Right after we stop selling bombs to the Saudis...

In other news, I can buy a 50" TV for $200 bucks this Black Friday. And the new iPhone is _sweet_.

Re:Totalitarianism In a Nutshell

[Anonymous Coward]

Same shit happened under McCarthy, which is ironic given your words. Could happen again in the US in a few years, only it would be an App that measured your Patriotism. It's not a left/right thing, it's a totalitarian thing.

Re:A nightmare for freedom, but no benefits?

[currently_awake]

No government in history has willingly given up power.

Why do you think that is a problem - for China?

[SuperKendall]

Blacklisted people will band together with blacklisted people to set up a parallel society

Yep! And then they will either be sent to re-education camps, or "disappeared".

China in fact would find it very HANDY for such people to band together, it would save them a lot of time.

If you want a 100% effective Panopticon, I can think of no better state on Earth that can make that happen by sweeping the undesirables under the rug.

So what everyone has to decide in the end is, do they want a model like that or a model like America? I'm not really sure there are any other workable models left.

Re:Why do you think that is a problem - for China?

[dryeo]

America, with its no-fly list, its sex offender list where taking a pee or a selfie can fuck your life, your criminal thing where being arrested and released is enough to fuck you, your employment laws that allow you to be fired for posting the wrong thing somewhere? The right to own a gun with how many exceptions?
Not to mention the political system that gives a choice of Coke or Pepsi and everyone is judged by their political affiliation.
As someone posted up the page, great rights written into your Constitution, shitty in practice.
For someone like you, with a good social credit standing, your country seems great, wait till you get wrongly arrested, especially if you can't afford a lawyer.

idiotic assessment

[Anonymous Coward]

People invest in protecting what's important to them; that's why banks invest in vaults and rich people have guards for their families and properties.

The USA has a huge military budget because:
[1] it values its freedom and independence
[2] it values its allies and trade routes
[3] it costs the USA a lot more to get any measure of military might since it does not have a conscripted military and its materiel is not made by government suppliers.

The USA has not, historically, HAD a "health service" because we traditionally left health to the people themselves, the private sectore, and communities and states (The US Constitution says nothing about healthcare, and it explicitly says that anything it does not assign to the federal government belongs to the people and to the states).

A little knowledge is dangerous --- and by your posting I judge you "mostly harmless"

Re:idiotic assessment

[iwbcman]

Man oh man, The BS is strong with this one:

The USA has a huge military budget because:
[1] it values its freedom and independence
[2] it values its allies and trade routes
[3] it costs the USA a lot more to get any measure of military might since it does not have a conscripted military and its materiel is not made by government suppliers.

The USA has a huge military budget because:

[1] it has whipped it's population, and that of a significant portion of the worlds population, into a frenzy of fear and paranoia, by maintaining a permanent war status since the end of WWII. Whether hot or cold, the USA has waged war against non-enemies, aggressively supporting brutal dictatorships around, killing millions in defence of "freedom and democracy" around the world. The USA as "protector" of the "free world" has been holding the human species hostage to the possibility of imminent extinction via nuclear weapons for nearly 70 years now. This in the name of valuing its freedom and independence.

[2]it has decided that the best social control mechanism for social pacification is to provide the lowest possible cost for goods and promoted consumerism as ersatz status symbols for a largely disenfranchised permanent underclass. In order to secure such cheap access to goods, the USA must dominate all world trade and be able to dictate prices for resources, resource extraction, production and distribution. This in the name of valuing its allies and trade routes.

[3] it spends a lot less money for the size of our military than any other country would for a similarly sized and scaled military because 18 year-old's with no prospects always form a cheap labor pool( "sold" as in soldier, comes from Roman Latin, daily wage-worker), particularly if one can convince them that they are serving their country men in the name of noble goals and values like "freedom and democracy". And because military production in the USA has always been "dual-purpose", a civilian feel-good, while producing weapons of mass destruction.

The USA has co-opted a tremendously large section of it's so-called private market for dual-purpose: production of disposable goods, while supplying the worlds largest military with an endless production line of "goods", of which no good can ever come. Most major manufacturing firms in the USA would not be economically viable if it were not for this arrangement. Boeing could never make it solely producing commercial air-liners, the market for such is not large enough, but if the Pentagon needs x number of fighter jets, missiles and rockets every year, which must be constantly restocked, due to usage in wars or due to degradation from not ever being used, they can show a profit for their civilian production lines. The same is, and has always been, true for GM, Ford, GE, etc.

The USA has not, historically, HAD a "health service" because we traditionally left health to the people themselves, the private sectore, and communities and states (The US Constitution says nothing about healthcare, and it explicitly says that anything it does not assign to the federal government belongs to the people and to the states).

The USA has not, historically, HAD a health service, because immiseration is a constitutive part of maintaining an exploitable permanent underclass. During the first 250 years of American history, surplus value, ie. profit, was made primarily by either a) stealing the indigenous peoples lands or b) exploiting "free labor", ie. slavery. Following the civil war profit has largely been made by exploiting those born into inter-generational poverty, both here and around the world. The majority of Europeans who immigrated to the USA during the first 150 years of colonization were debt-prisoners, ie. the then european permanent underclass. The USA has proudly cultivated cultural identities for the permanent underclass, going back almost 350 years, nowadays we call them "redne

Scary as f*ck, is it not?

[Qbertino]

We all know that Orwell would say "OK, I give up. I was totally wrong, this is way more sophisticated a totalitarian system than I could dream up." We all happly carry our dobbleplusgood portable televisor around with us. Add a super-controlling engieered gouvernment to that, and you're way past 1984. Big time.

Maybe next time around I'll really ditch my regular smartphone for something else. I've allready considered stocking up on older Blackberrys. They're pretty cheap now.

Mandatory GPS

[aberglas]

They do not need mandatory GPS in cars. They already have number plate readers everywhere. Plus they can track your phone.

Re:What a bunch of motherfucking assholes!

[Zontar The Mindless]

Which—even if true—has nothing to do with the topic at hand, since China isn't really a Communist country in any way other than in the name of the ruling party.

Re:Google works for Chinese government

[MrKaos]

Same as in pre WWII Germany, where Ford sold trucks and IBM Holerite machines.

(IIRC) U.S companies sued the US government for bombing German factories they invested in.

A plan for mental illness

[MrKaos]

This system will be heaven for people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder because they will be able to extend their abuse onto anybody they meet in a meaningful way. They will be able to charm and connive all of the social goodwill they need while causing serious damage to the people they abuse.

Social media is the vehicle for personality disorders to spread.

Re:just add Transgender bathrooms and free abortio

[Kiuas]

What's the big deal? Just think of it like China is adopting a big Code Of Conduct, and people who don't behave accordingly will be blacklisted, but instead of just from open source software development, from life!. Isn't that your tranny SJW end game?

Dude literally stated that he's opposed to all of this as a liberal and you went and argued the exact opposite point because apparently either you cannot read or just enjoy building massive strawmen. How 'fun'. I can do this too, watch me:

"What's the big deal, China's just making sure no-one can openly criticize the Dear Leader or his party, and those who dissent too hard or belong to the wrong religion/ethnicity/political movement will be taken to 're-education camps' where if need be they can be killed and their organs harvested if some Good Loyal Citizens(tm) are in need of them, isn't that your ultra-conservative Trumpian end-game; to have the government be able to operate with impunity, above the rule of law and get rid of the pesky media that Trump calls 'the enemy'?"

See how easy this is? Now Is this productive for the discussion at large in any way? Nope. It's just 'ooh I'm so right they're so wrong aah' -partisan ego jerk off for cunts like you. Grow the fuck up man.

How to destabilize China...

[b0s0z0ku]

Hack the thing. The hack could come from a government, or a private organization like WikiLeaks with an interest in causing chaos. Don't destroy it, just start slightly altering people's credit.

Just start lowering the credit of people with military training and access to guns a fractional amount. Veterans, police, military, etc. Make them slightly more angry and frustrated. Then start fractionally increasing the credit of people with borderline anti-government views. Create an angry underclass with military training and access to weapons while helping some of the people who will radicalize them do their thing.

What could possibly go wrong?

[Dunbal]

The Beijing project will improve blacklist systems so that those deemed untrustworthy will be "unable to move even a single step,"

So basically they will create a group of people who have nothing left to lose. Well done. That's going to work out great.

Re: A nightmare for freedom, but no benefits?

[ljw1004]

Counterexample: every country that joined the EU gave up the supremacy of its own high court, have up the ability to determine numerous regulations, indeed have up the final say on its national budget as we see with Italy today.