Opinion: Fears about China’s social-credit system are probably overblown, but it will still be chilling
Passengers wait to enter a subway outside Beijing Railway Station during the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday travel rush. By Simina Mistreanu March 8 at 9:00 AM Simina Mistreanu is a Beijing-based journalist.
The announcement of the travel-ban data came from the National Public Credit Information Center, a subsidiary of China’s main planning body, the National Development and Reform Commission. The center was established in September 2017 to collect data related to social credit, and to connect various regions and levels of government for sharing the data, with the aim of rolling out a national social-credit system by 2020.
The schemes are heterogeneous and leave plenty of latitude to whomever runs them. A social-credit system run by a city, for example, might penalize businesses for failing to comply with safety rules, but a system run by a neighborhood might deduct points from residents who fail to care for elderly family members or spread defamatory rumors online.
The social-credit system and atmosphere in Xinjiang have some things in common. In both cases, authorities employ extensive surveillance methods and big data analysis to essentially limit people’s freedom of movement and expression. Both aim to preemptively shape the ways people act: the social-credit system through incentives and sanctions, the Xinjiang policies via police-state measures against ethnic minorities.
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