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People Changing Jobs Too Often Could Be Punished by China's Social Credit System (abacusnews.com)

Posted by msmash on from the growing-tension dept.

Lots of things can hurt your social credit in China. Failing to repay your debts, plagiarizing academic articles and building a debt-laden tech empire and then fleeing to another country, to name a few random examples. One province now wants to add another "discredited behavior" that seems much more harmless: Switching jobs too often. From a report: Zhejiang is pushing to build a local social credit system that will, among other things, deem residents a "discredited" person if they move from job to job too frequently, according to a local TV report. "If someone keeps quitting and landing new jobs, his social credit will definitely be a problem," Zhejiang official Ge Pingan said at a local forum, addressing a complaint from one company's human resources department about being unable to do anything when employees want to leave. Ge didn't specify how "frequently" is too frequent, but he said the upcoming system will put restrictions on both companies and individual workers.

12 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. Really sick argument by ranton · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "If someone keeps quitting and landing new jobs, his social credit will definitely be a problem," Zhejiang official Ge Pingan said at a local forum, addressing a complaint from one company's human resources department about being unable to do anything when employees want to leave.

    This is a really sick viewpoint, although in this case there isn't much cultural difference between the east and west. Plenty of business owners in the US would love to have ways to keep employees other than providing a good work experience and fair pay.

    --
    -- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
    1. Re:Really sick argument by XXongo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "If someone keeps quitting and landing new jobs, his social credit will definitely be a problem," Zhejiang official Ge Pingan said at a local forum, addressing a complaint from one company's human resources department about being unable to do anything when employees want to leave.

      This is a really sick viewpoint, although in this case there isn't much cultural difference between the east and west. Plenty of business owners in the US would love to have ways to keep employees other than providing a good work experience and fair pay.

      Yes, but the U.S. does not have a government-operated "social credit system" that allows business owners to prevent people from traveling, or even from using public transportation, if they switch jobs.

    2. Re:Really sick argument by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It seems rather redundant. I mean, excessive job-hopping would seem to make one less employable already. As a prospective employer, when you look at a resume and see that someone hasn't been at a job longer than a year for the past seven or eight years, you'd naturally wonder why, and might tend to assume that this person may not last long at your company either. Why codify such a "social rule" when such a tendency tends to occur naturally?

      Also, the most problematic "sick viewpoint", IMO, is the government believing it has the right and perhaps even an obligation to stick its nose in every aspect of a person's life. As you said, while employers can complain about such things, only the government can really enforce the necessity for workers to live like slaves with no hope of escaping to a better job.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    3. Re:Really sick argument by jeff4747 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As someone who has stayed in my current job for over a decade

      You're an idiot.

      By staying at the same employer for 10 years, you've lost out on about 2-3 large raises you would have received by changing jobs. Depending on where you are in your career, you've missed out on 2-3 promotions too.

      "Stay at the same employer for decades" died out when management decided layoffs were great for their bonuses, instead of something you do as a last ditch effort to avoid bankruptcy. Yes, it means institutional knowledge is constantly flooding out the door, but that's what management decided they wanted.

  2. Mirroring what already happens... for how long... by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Interesting

    An interesting aspect of this social credit thing is that each step mirrors things that already exist today... it's well understood that changing jobs too often looks bad on a resume. Or at least, it did before lots of people started doing that, don't even know if it's that bad these days...

    That's the bad thing about a system like social credit codifying rules, is that the rules that affect your score probably change a lot more slowly than socially accepted behavior. I wonder what happens when you try to trap the unwritten morals of a society in amber at one point in time, never to change again (or to change so slowly it's essentially the case). Will that bottle up repression in the people? Or create a kind of mindless utopia that lasts forever? So far, nothing has lasted forever... or even close.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  3. Not Yet... by nickmalthus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If the US is fully committed to capitalism and the methods of the authoritarian Chinese government proves to be the most profitable for corporate/government stakeholders then it is only a matter of time before the US adopts similar policies.

    --
    If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
    1. Re:Not Yet... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

      it is only a matter of time before the US adopts similar policies.

      America already has a similar system. We are ahead of China on this. The big difference is that in America your credit score is controlled by corporations rather than the government. But similar criteria are used, and excessive job-hopping can hurt your score.

    2. Re:Not Yet... by alvinrod · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What does banning a useful predictor actually fix though? In one case, the lenders just find some new proxy that's strongly correlated with the fact you've banned them from using and you're nowhere. In another, they're now rejecting people who could have otherwise gotten a loan (or charging them higher rates to cover increased uncertainty) and now they're unable to buy a house because lenders don't want to deal with the risk. In the worst case they give out more loans that people can't manage because they can't hold down a job and now they've got even more problems in their life.

      Would you tell doctors that they can't use how long a person has been smoking in any diagnoses that they make for patients? Of course not, because relevant data is relevant data. If it's not useful, then it isn't used. You don't need to ban lenders from considering shoe size when giving out loans, because it's not useful so they don't use it. If they think that it matters, it probably does.

  4. A tool for repression by XXongo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Thank you, anonymous coward Chinese troll, for your delightful fake facts.

    AP News: "China bars millions from travel for ‘social credit’ offenses". ref

    Business Insider: "China has already started punishing people [with low social credit] by restricting their travel. Nine million people with low scores have been blocked from buying tickets for domestic flights, Channel News Asia reported in March, citing official statistics." Ref: https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-punishments-and-rewards-explained-2018-4

    Wikipedia: "Travel ban. By the end of 2018, 5.5 million high-speed rail trips and 17.5 million flights had been denied to prospective travellers who were on a blacklist." ref

    And the "social credit" system is also used, yes, to enforce politics. Wired: "If solving problems was the real goal, the CCP would not need social credit to do it," she says. "China’s social credit system is a state-driven program designed to do one thing, to uphold and expand the Chinese Communist Party’s power." (Ref: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-social-credit-system-explained

  5. China and America actually are different by XXongo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...Working in tech field, then you probably have NDAs/claims that you are taking their intellectual property. Failing that, remember when Apple, Adobe, Google, etc. agreed not to hire each other's employees?

    Yes, but that was challenged and ruled illegal by the U.S. government. That makes a difference: in the US, the government challenges the anticompetitive "gentleman's agreement". In China, the government enforces it.

    https://www.cnet.com/news/appl...
    https://www.mintz.com/insights...
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  6. That already exists. It's called "Religion". by Qbertino · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I wonder what happens when you try to trap the unwritten morals of a society in amber at one point in time, never to change again (or to change so slowly it's essentially the case). Will that bottle up repression in the people?

    That already exists. It's called "Religion". And yes, it does pretty much exactly that.

    --
    We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
  7. Re:China is such a great place by kenai_alpenglow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The end-case of this is serfdom. You cannot leave your job without your "noble"'s approval. Sub government for noble in this case.