Social credit score: A virtual prison in China

BEIJING: Chinese government is installing QR scanners inside the homes of its nationals to evaluate their social credit score. Here, the government can easily view the social credit score of a household by scanning their QR code and also basically reminds the person to meet up certain criteria to improve their score.

The citizens sometimes need do ?compulsory? community service tasks such as road repair in order to uplift their social ranking in their communities. By doing so China is pushing its people to do free labor that resembles a home-grown slavery system.

Moreover, the Chinese with low social credit score has to pay the government in order to get basic facilities like taking a train or plane for travelling. It seems China?s social credit system is meant to manipulate, punish and control its countrymen like slaves.

China?s Social Security System deducts points on very basic habits of an individual and gives a rating. Living in China resembles a prison due to this system.

Points would be deducted if a person is drinking too much, playing video games, not following traffic rules, missing on paying taxes, facing legal charges, spending frivolously, visiting unauthorized websites, socializing with people with low scores, and the biggest deduction would be for criticizing the government or its policies.

Though, maintaining a high score is a tough task, but if maintained individuals can have low interest rates on loans, access to high-speed trains and planes, and easier access to visas.

In numbers, over 80 percent of provinces, regions, and cities had introduced some version of this system in China. Also, the authoritarian Chinese regime has brought over 33 million businesses in China under the ambit of a corporate social credit system and already given them a score to modulate their operations.

China?s social credit system rates individuals based on the accumulation and analysis of data. In some trials, they score people numerically from 1 to 1000 similar to America?s FICO score for debt repayment, and sometimes it is A-D.

This social scoring system (SCS) was initially introduced by local government of China in 2009. In 2014, the state council issued a roadmap of building a comprehensive social credit system for citizens, companies, and organizations by 2020.

In January 2015, the People?s Bank of China selected eight companies to develop pilot consumer credit score programs in middle of some push backs from regulators against the private sector schemes.

In April 2016, 32 urban districts were selecting to pilot the scoring system and in January 2018 around 12 cities, including Beijing and Guangzhou, became part of the trial.

In April 2019, senior officials of the Chinese government started threatening companies with low score with disciplinary actions such as restriction to their funding, and in June 2019 the state council agreed to speed up the building of a social credit system, including the blacklist element.

According to the National Public Credit Information Centre, Chinese courts banned would-be travelers from buying flight by 17.5 million times by 2018. This scoring system has black listed citizens with low score restricted their travel arrangements 5.5 million times, stating ?once discredited, limited everywhere?.

This means if a person?s social credit score downgrades his/her purchasing power would be halted and passport will be blocked. For businesses, firstly, the monitoring is done basis regulatory compliance for missing on fulfillment contractual obligations and overall corporate behavior including environmental practices and product quality; and secondly, a low scoring would impact a company?s financing eligibility for government contracts and participate in markets and would put it under government?s surveillance with restrictions to state incentives.

Though it seems that China by implementing a social scoring system is doing all the right things to reform, but practically it wants its citizens to behave in a certain manner restricting their freedom of speech and purchasing power.

If a person with a low score interacts with another person that would also impact that person?s score. This would ultimately result in social isolation of the person with low score.

According to National Public Credit Information Centre?s 2018 annual report China had blacklisted 5.5 million people for social offences basis the social credit score, barred people 17.5 million times from buying plane tickets and 5.5 million times from buying train tickets, and 128 people were blocked from leaving the country because of unpaid taxes.

This literally translates into that if you are living in China, as an entrepreneur you cannot dream big and take risks, as a scientist you cannot be innovative because that again sometimes require breaking rules, and as a citizen you are living in a society where a government algorithm is calculating your every move and punishing you accordingly.

This is a very reason China has a nightmarish image and a negative net migration rate.

(europeantimes.org/)