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China Creates App To Tell You If You're Near Someone In Debt, Encourages You To Report Them (techspot.com)
The Chinese government has developed a mobile app that tells users if they are near someone who is in debt. The app, called a "map of deadbeat debtors," flashes when the user is within 500 meters of a debtor and displays that person's exact location. TechSpot reports: News of the app has caused quite a bit of controversy after it was originally reported by the state-run China Daily. It is an extension to China's existing "social credit" system which scores people based on how they act in public. The app is available through the WeChat platform which has become immensely popular in China. The government stated that "Deadbeat debtors in North China's Hebei province will find it more difficult to abscond as the Higher People's Court of Hebei on Monday introduced" the app. Once a user is alerted that they are close to a debtor, the user can then view their personal information. This will reveal their name, national ID number, and why they were added to the debtor list. The debtor can then be publicly shamed or reported to the authorities if it is deemed that they are capable of repaying their debts.
It would be very interesting to know what Chinese thought about this.
(We already know what we think about it. Outside the USA it is terrible, inside the USA with the privately run credit agencies it is just business as normal.)
But seriously, does anyone have any feedback upon what the Chinese themselves think about this sort of thing?
Dupe
Have gnu, will travel.
In other news, the Chinese government has developed a mobile app that tells users if they are near someone who has submitted a dupe. The app, called a "map of deadbeat duplicators," flashes when the user is within 500 meters of a duplicator and displays that person's exact location.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Because you want to shape the behavior of the populace to turn on each other over such things. It worked well before.
then when someone visits Washington DC when they get near a politician it will notify with a message that the US Government is 23 trillion dollars in debt, call the police immediately!
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
That's the real reason for this -- to keep those not in power fighting each other, rather than looking upwards. It also happens in the west (just via different mechanisms).
There are a number of articles pointing out that the coverage of this stuff is full of holes. Here's the actual article:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a...
"Deadbeat debtors in North China's Hebei province will find it more difficult to abscond as the Higher People's Court of Hebei on Monday introduced a mini-program on WeChat targeting them. Called "a map of deadbeat debtors", the program allows users to find out whether there are any debtors within 500 meters."
First, this is a initiative by a local province, not "China". Second, it involves those who have defaulted on actual physical loans, and is completely unrelated to the "social credit" concept that the Chinese government is talking about. Additionally, many other things that are supposedly part of the social credit system, and reported as such in the West are actually privately designed and run things on Chinese social media sites run by Ali Baba and the like, and not actually ideas related to the social credit concept. (example: the thing where if you play a lot of MMOs you get rated lower on the dating apps: none of that has any connection to the Chinese government. The social media that collects the data and the dating app are both privately designed and run systems. It's like blaming the Feds for Facebook algorithms). Basically, 99% of the things that get reported as being part of the social credit concept aren't in fact part of anything run by the federal government in China. This is just a very poor l
While there are definitely questions to be answered, nobody is being well-informed about the issues if we keep getting bombarded with completely unconnected things and being told that they are "THE social credit system". The actual system proposal, from what I've read is was better translated as a "social trust system" in China since fraud is rampant and trust in local/federal government officials and private companies is rock bottom. The biggest penalties such as being blocked from luxury hotels and first-class flight were in fact proposed for company executives of companies that have breached the social credit system. The real story here, lost in the BS, is that China desperately wants to create a "trust culture" where people have faith in not only each other but government and companies. that basic trust is highly lacking, and that's really what this is all about. Doing business in China is much harder that it needs to be, because rampant fraud has led to a lack of trust. The *actual* social credit program seems more about creating a core of "trusted" entities, both public and private institutions.
Maybe the social credit ideas are completely misguided and the actual system will end up being abused and failing completely, but it really serves no purpose to get fed blatantly false headlines conflating unrelated things with the actual Chinese federal government's plans.
Nah, it's because Chinese personal bankruptcy laws are pathetically weak. There are people who either rack up debt they can't pay, or just don't pay debts when they're capable of it. If an individual debt is below a certain level, it's very hard to sue the debtor, and with the weak bankruptcy laws you can't get their assets liquidated and/or restrict them from running a business. Fixing or improving the laws for better protection against deadbeat debtors would be hard, because the Chinese government isn't a coherent unit, it's a massive bureaucracy that barely functions. Making this app to try and shame people into servicing their debts and/or get people to avoid doing business with them is far easier.