For all who are interested in this topic, yesterday there was a talk about the Chinese Social Credit System at the Chaos Communication Congress (35C3). It is available in English, German and Chinese.
The Chinese Social Credit System (SCS) has been discussed a lot in Western media. However, we do not know currently how the system that is supposed to take nationwide effect by 2020 will look like, as there are more than 70 pilot projects currently undertaken. These pilots rank from commercial royalty and rewards programs (Sesame Credit) to an Orwellian system, where each action has a predetermined associated score (Rongcheng). In-between, there’s nebulous algorithmic systems that basically act as a Black Box (Honesty Shanghai). This talk, therefore, looks at some of these pilots and their implementation details, and through an agent-based modeling framework, discusses the likely effects of different implementations. In doing so, it shows that most of the systems currently being tested are prone to manipulation by leaders from all levels of government, and that the ostensible goal of allocating scarce resources more efficiently is unlikely to be served by the new system(s).
The author, Antonia Hmaidi, is a PhD candidate in East Asian Economics with a focus on China. She presented a talk on the impact of internet censorship at the 33C3. This talk’s goal is to provide those interested with a technically-grounded understanding of “the” Chinese social credit system and its possible impact on Chinese society and economy. In doing so, it seeks to provide a more nuanced picture than is usually presented in either Chinese or Western media. Working on data science and machine learning in her free time allows the author to better understand the algorithms comprising “the” social credit system.
Having gone through half of it up until now, this seems to be quite intriguing. Clearly more advanced than the average 中國人 may think (as she highlighted) but truly something to be watchful for considering the progression. Will they accomplish their 2020 goal? Who knows… but, 2019 is around the corner and its fruition will undoubtedly be for the world to see.
I read widely on Asian politics, but that would have to be the best and most indepth explanation of China’s upcoming implementation of its social credit system that I have seen. Her description of gaunxi in the Q&A session is highly astute, and she is wise beyond her years.
whats really weird about this is the chinese who are going along with it thinking its great. i know they have to comply but some of them genuinely seem to think its great. again it seems the chinese people will do nothing while the country gets dragged further into the dark ages.
this would be a good system IF you benefited people who behaved instead of punishing those who didn’t. chinese society is rather uncivilized and a system like that would improve peoples behavior. but thats not what this is about, its about the govt taking more control and people losing even more freedoms while the corrupt get away with even more. those chinese putting their faith in this are demented.
really?
do we once again have to present the example of how “these things” always end up?
“The Stasi had 90,000 full-time employees who were assisted by 170,000 full-time unofficial collaborators ( Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter ); together these made up 1 in 63 (nearly 2%) of the entire East German population. Together with these, a much larger number of occasional informers brought up the total to 1 per 6.5 persons.”
Just 2% of ChiComms is about 30,000,000 wanna-be snooper/spies domestically.
Have fun all you foreigners living there.
yea and about 2/3 of the jewish population of europe was wiped out during WWII and that guy madoff stole a lot of money. Therefore foreigners in China watch out!