Posted on 09/21/2018 3:37:46 AM PDT by gattaca
FULL TITLE: China's Chilling 'Social Credit System' Is Straight Out of Dystopian Sci-Fi, And It's Already Switched On
Like Black Mirror. Totally like Black Mirror.
It's been in the pipeline for years: a sprawling, technological mass surveillance network the likes of which the world has never seen. And it's already been switched on.
China's "Social Credit System" – which is expected to be fully operational by 2020 – doesn't just monitor the nation's almost 1.4 billion citizens. It's also designed to control and coerce them, in a gigantic social engineering experiment that some have called the "gamification of trust".
That's because the massive project, which has been slowly coming together for over a decade, is about assigning an individual trust score to each and every citizen, and to businesses too.
According to China's Communist Party, the system will "allow the trustworthy to roam freely under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step".
To pull this off, the unprecedented scheme will harness the immense reach of China's technological infrastructure: some 200 million CCTV cameras, according to a report by Australia's Foreign Correspondent.
The idea is these ever-watchful eyes will be hooked up to facial recognition systems, and cross-checked with financial, medical records, and legal records – with the whole apparatus regulated and interpreted by advanced, big-data-crunching AI networks.
The sweeping dystopia of it all is uncannily reminiscent of the TV show Black Mirror – in particular the eerily prescient episode "Nosedive" – but while several outlets have pointed the similarities out, China's ultimate goal goes even further.
"This is potentially a totally new way for the government to manage the economy and society," economist Martin Chorzempa from the Peterson Institute for International Economics told The New York Times in July.
"The goal is algorithmic governance."
For such a complex plan, the crux of social credit is simple. In localised pilot programs that are already operational throughout Chinese cities, citizens are assigned a numerical score.
For positive personal and social acts – such as paying bills on time, engaging in charity, and properly sorting your recycling – citizens get their score bumped up, which gives them access to perks, like better credit facilities, cheaper public transport, and even shorter wait times for hospital services.
But if you break the rules, beware. People who are late with payments, or caught jaywalking or smoking in non-smoking areas, will be punished.
In what's being described as a "digital dictatorship", their score takes a hit for each infraction, meaning they incur things like financial penalties and even travel restrictions.
That's what happened to investigative journalist Liu Hu, who says the social credit system destroyed his career after he was blacklisted for making accusations of government corruption.
Branded "dishonest", he had access to rail travel suspended, and his social media accounts – comprising some 2 million followers – were reportedly shut down, effectively making his job impossible.
As Hu told Foreign Correspondent, he doesn't believe most Chinese are aware of how these kinds of punishments could affect them.
"You can see from the Chinese people's mental state," he says.
"Their eyes are blinded and their ears are blocked. They know little about the world and live in an illusion."
But the social credit system reaches even further than this.
Individuals aren't the only ones subject to this gamification. So too are companies inside China, but also businesses outside it – with international airlines already feeling the coercive aspects of the controversial system, which some fear could "interfere directly in the sovereignty of other nations".
Back home, surveys show the early system is already popular with socially advantaged citizens who are already enjoying the perks of pilot programs.
In other words, the game is on.
"It sounds like it will help improve the quality of citizens in the long run," Shanghai-based saleswoman Joyce Hu told NPR last year.
"As long as it doesn't violate my privacy, I'm okay with it."
How long before the socialists push it through here in the USA?
China is the prototype. We are the objective, as usual.
They already are when you post something not nice on the social media.
Bookmark
I’m sure Tom Friedman will be waxing lyrical about this totalitarian system soon...
Bkmk
...They already are when you post something not nice on the social media...
Farcebook is already assigning all users a “reliability” number.
No sense of rights of a citizen, just duties.
We should be running guns to China. The only problem is our intel community is on the Chicom’s side.
Except here, you will be docked points from the beginning to correct for “white cis-het male privilege.” Politicians, actors, college professors, and Democrat donors will get bonus points to ensure they remain in the social elite.
Mark of the beast
We already started with Holder telling banks to stay away from gun businesses
Where are all the people who told us years ago that capitalism and making Red China part of the international trading system would make it more free and democratic?
This is a good question for these two dead-ender globalists.
Sounds like what Apple is setting up...
Revelation 13:16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.
It’s coming here, but it will have a really sweet, nice-sounding name.
It has been said many times that it is only the Western man, with his philosophical concept of liberty and history of holding leaders accountable, that is the only hurdle for the Elites to overcome to install a totalitarian world police state.
It's not up to the chinaman to protect freedom. It's up to us.
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