China’s social experiment is dytopian to the core. Do the people who are participating know what this will bring about? Better yet, are they willing or unwilling participants? If so, why are they participating? These are questions that need to be asked and answered; but don’t look for anyone in the mass media to do this in any great detail.
People all around the world are engaging in some type of social media platform on a daily basis. Whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Wechat, or Renren, it is a growing part of human society, for better or for worse. If you live in China, it’s definitely for the worse. And for everyone else around the world, don’t think this stuff only happens, or is only going to happen in China!
The Social Credit Score
The “Social Credit Score” system that has been cultivated by the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms and implemented under the modern day version of Mao Zedong, the current lifetime leader of the communist party, Xi Jinping. This has been going on for a few years now and they have plans to have it implemented by the year 2020. This is when the government plans to have access to all data available on its citizens and then they will be given a number that ranks each citizen. They have been using projects like Sesame Credit to gather information on individual users, which is Alibaba’s financial wing and has access to about 400 million users. Alibaba is basically the Amazon of the East and has a ton of data on its users.
This is how governments will be able to control citizens and their behavior, by tracking everything that they do. You want a good job? What’s you social credit score? Do you want a potential life partner? What’s you social credit score? Do you want to travel abroad? Do you want to travel domestically by public transportation? Do you want to … you fill in the blank? What’s you social credit score? Get the picture?
The fact is that most people, unfortunately, will not reject this. They will most likely get sucked into this scheme and will want to prove their worthiness to their masters. Just like the person who wants to go through school and be the best to prove their worthiness to their parents, and a potential employer, these folks will most likely participate with that same mentality. This is a government’s wet dream. Let the people control each other, so we don’t have to. And they will!
This will ultimately have a devastating effect on society. When people willfully stop associating with others because it may harm their social score, what type of society will that type of behavior produce? It will produce a society full of rats that will rat others out at the behest of the government in return for some brownie points. A document from China’s elite State council explains it like this “social credit will forge a public opinion environment that trust-keeping is glorious, and that the new system will reward those who report acts of breach of trust.” This system sounds just peachy. Where do I sign up?
Thwarting Crime and the Allure of Convenience
Thwarting crime and the allure of convenience are generally the selling points to systems like these. Having the ability to stop a conman I guess trumps one of the most important aspects that keeps a society together, privacy. Yes privacy! Do you know everything about everyone you come in contact with on a daily basis? Do you want to know everything about everyone? How about just your partner? Do you want your partner to know everything about you? Probably not. Everyone is entitled a certain level of privacy. This type of program will basically destroy that and what results probably won’t be good at all.
Unsurprisingly people all around the world have been willingly giving up privacy to the likes of Google, Facebook, and other companies simply to use their products. The issues surrounding Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have been in the news recently, so most are familiar with that issue. However, this social credit score system takes it to the next level. China is a testing ground. If they are able to control the behavior of their 1.3 billion citizens without having to use force, don’t think for a second other countries won’t follow, because they will.
And So It Begins...
China has recently announced that they will begin banning people from public transportation like trains and planes due to low social credit scores starting May 1, 2018. The Orwellian dystopia is upon us and this may ultimately be a vision of your future. That is, if you allow it to happen.
Image sources: http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/how-chinas-social-credit-score-will-shape-the-perfect-citizen/
http://echeck.org/credit-sesame-review/
Sources: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-03/chinas-social-credit-score
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-credit/china-to-bar-people-with-bad-social-credit-from-planes-trains-idUSKCN1GS10S
http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/how-chinas-social-credit-score-will-shape-the-perfect-citizen/
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-34592186
https://www.creditsesame.com/
http://echeck.org/credit-sesame-review/