By: Marc Morano
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-social-credit-system-explained
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China’s social credit system has been compared to Black Mirror, Big Brother and every other dystopian future sci-fi writers can think up. The reality is more complicated — and in some ways, worse. …
China’s social credit system expands that idea to all aspects of life, judging citizens’ behavior and trustworthiness. Caught jaywalking, don’t pay a court bill, play your music too loud on the train — you could lose certain rights, such as booking a flight or train ticket. …
What’s troubling is when those private systems link up to the government rankings — which is already happening with some pilots, she says.
One city, Rongcheng, gives all residents 1,000 points to start. Authorities make deductions for bad behavior like traffic violations, and add points for good behaviour such as donating to charity. …
So far, taking part in both the private and government versions is technically voluntary; in the future, the official social credit system will be mandatory.
Liu found he was named on a List of Dishonest Persons Subject to Enforcement by the Supreme People’s Court as “not qualified” to buy a plane ticket, and banned from travelling some train lines, buying property, or taking out a loan. …
“There was no file, no police warrant, no official advance notification. They just cut me off from the things I was once entitled to,” he told The Globe and Mail. “What’s really scary is there’s nothing you can do about it. You can report to no one. You are stuck in the middle of nowhere.” …
“In China there is no such thing as the rule of law. Regulations that can be largely apolitical on the surface can be political when the Communist Party of China (CCP) decides to use them for political purposes.” …
“The west should not copy any aspect of social credit,” Hoffman says. “Often comparisons are drawn between private applications like Uber and its rating system for customers and drivers. While these private company systems are extremely problematic in my view, they are fundamentally different. The People’s Republic of China is an authoritarian country, the Chinese Communist Party is responsible for gross human rights violations for decades— just look at the example of Xinjiang now. There is nothing any liberal democratic society should even think about copying in the social credit system.”
C.S. Lewis: “I dread government in the name of science. That is how tyrannies come in.”
Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961: “We must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” – Eisenhower: “A government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity” and “the prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever-present and is gravely to be regarded.”
The World Economic Forum has called for “a Great Reset of capitalism” due to COVID and to help fight climate change. Klaus Schwab said the virus has given us an “opportunity” to pursue “equality & sustainability.” – “The world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions,” Schwab explained.
Thomas Sowell: “Experts are often called in, not to provide factual information or dispassionate analysis for the purpose of decision-making by responsible officials, but to give political cover for decisions already made and based on other considerations entirely.”
“A flu d’état.” “A takeover of our supposedly democratic political process by unelected & unaccountable administrative state medical bureaucrats.”
Peter Hitchens: “All the crudest weapons of despotism, the curfew, the presumption of guilt and the power of arbitrary arrest, are taking shape in the midst of what used to be a free country.”
