China’s dangerous national social credit system that will violate privacy, expand police state

DHARAMSALA, 26 July: China is said to be developing a dangerous national social credit system to track and grade every citizen that will violate privacy and expands the police state.

The proposed system tries to create a standard for tracking individual actions across Chinese society, and rewarding or punishing accordingly, reports the CNBC.

While the Chinese government is forging ahead with official efforts to create a national social credit system, it has sparked fears that the government will gain overt control over ordinary people’s lives, the report added.

Meanwhile, several analysts are reported to be skeptical and have expressed doubt over whether the authorities can ever reach their goal that stems from the disjointed nature of the few dozen pilot programs that now exist.

As it stands, it’s unclear how fairly such a system could impose penalties on individuals, or how easy it would be to get off blacklists. But the authorities already claim to have the records of 990 million individuals and 25.91 million enterprises and the communist regime is running up against a self-imposed 2020 deadline to formulate the nationwide social credit plan.

Since China’s push to build the social credit system kicked off in earnest five years ago, a few dozen pilot programs have emerged with varying tracking metrics, and consequences for violations, the report added.

Though China claims that the measures are an attempt to manufacture a more law-abiding society in a country, it has sparked concerns over the possibility of its misuse.

China’s grave human rights record aggravates the matter and the social credit system that could likely become invasive, with few checks on its power doesn’t bode well either.

“The consequences are not huge at the moment but the system is developing fast and more sticks can quickly be added to the system once it is running,” Genia Kostka, professor of Chinese politics at Freie Universitat Berlin was quoted as saying in the report.

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.

Unveiled in 2014, the idea for the social credit was announced in 2007 by the communist regime.

Experts are of the view that the Chinese Social Credit System is the ultimate big brother nightmare and a low score in the social credit system has serious consequences from dating and travel bans, to employment and housing.