China Bans 23 Million From Buying Travel Tickets as Part of 'Social Credit' System (theguardian.com)

China blocked 23 million "discredited" travelers from buying plane or train tickets last year as part of the country's controversial "social credit" system aimed at improving the behavior of citizens. From a report: According to the National Public Credit Information Centre's 2018 report, 17.5 million people were banned from buying flights and 5.5 million barred from purchasing high-speed train tickets because of social credit offences. The report released last week said: "Once discredited, limited everywhere." The social credit system aims to incentivize "trustworthy" behavior through penalties as well as rewards. According to a government document about the system dating from 2014, the aim is to "allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step." Social credit offenses range from not paying individual taxes or fines to spreading false information and taking drugs.

Comments

Discredited

[Camel Pilot]

"allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step."

Discredited here includes voicing an opinion against the prevailing totalitarian regime or someone in power. Can you say dystopian.

Re:Coming soon to the USA

[willaien]

There's a huge difference between organizations enforcing their own rules and the government running a system to disenfranchise people.

The implications are more interesting

[BigSlowTarget]

China must have tremendous confidence in its ability to suppress people to create common cause for 23 million people to hate the system. That big a number must contain a lot of capable people - and no doubt a bunch of mistakes. All of those now have a clear and undeniable focus for their rage and rebellion.

This sounds like a program likely to have unexpected results

Just a "21st century version" of ours

[MikeRT]

1. There is no concept in modern America of "did the time, paid for the crime" with regard to social attitudes and how ex-felons can be treated.
2. Say something "offensive" in public and watch a wild-eyed mob that makes a witch-burning look tame come after and try to make sure there is "no place in society" for you.
3. Now corporations are getting in on the act with Chase locking accounts because the person was a Badthinker(tm).

Re:Sounds like nazi germany how long before camps

[Anonymous Coward]

You're either being sarcastic or overlooking the current Muslim detention camps:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/16/world/asia/xinjiang-china-forced-labor-camps-uighurs.html

Re: Sound's like a good thing

[dryeo]

Well America does it privately. Credit bureaus to keep track of if you didn't pay back loans, lists of people who were arrested along with a culture of not hiring someone if previously arrested, as you must be a bad person if ever arrested and a really bad person if found or forced to plead guilty. As it is a private decision not to hire, rent housing etc it's considered fine.
Government also gets involved with lists of people not allowed to fly, lists of people not allowed to live in certain places, lists of people not allowed to own firearms and even lists of people not allowed to vote.
These lists usually make sense at first look, eg not allowing sex offenders to live by kids, until you look at all the reasons the government will put you on the sex offenders list.