In China they’ve recently introduced the concept of social credit, which is an amalgamation of some of the things you think of as credit as well as other activities, such as giving to charity or failing to pay court fines – or having friends with low social credit scores. Mara Hvistendahl of Wired has a wide-ranging and fascinating report on it:
Ant Financial wasn’t the only entity keen on using data to measure people’s worth. Coincidentally or not, in 2014 the Chinese government announced it was developing what it called a system of “social credit.” In 2014, the State Council, China’s governing cabinet, publicly called for the establishment of a nationwide tracking system to rate the reputations of individuals, businesses, and even government officials. The aim is for every Chinese citizen to be trailed by a file compiling data from public and private sources by 2020, and for those files to be searchable by fingerprints and other biometric characteristics. The State Council calls it a “credit system that covers the whole society.”
For the Chinese Communist Party, social credit is an attempt at a softer, more invisible authoritarianism. The goal is to nudge people toward behaviors ranging from energy conservation to obedience to the Party. Samantha Hoffman, a consultant with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London who is researching social credit, says that the government wants to preempt instability that might threaten the Party. “That’s why social credit ideally requires both coercive aspects and nicer aspects, like providing social services and solving real problems. It’s all under the same Orwellian umbrella.”
Thinking about this, it occurred to me that this is sort of an illustration of one key difference in the moral systems of China and the West. In the West, our moral system is religiously based and beyond the domain and abilities of the most governments to seriously affect it. In those cases where the moral system does change, at least in the United States, it has less to do with the government and more to do with popular debate and opinion. (In the past, monarchies sought the imprimatur of God, but that didn’t necessarily give them influence – only a good Army making the trip to Rome could do that. I suppose ol’ King Henry’s construction of the Anglican Church might apply, although the claim goes that he just wanted to marry someone else – which is an element of morality, now isn’t it?)
But China lacks any 3rd party moral system, if you will: it’s the domain of the Chinese government, and since the only legal occupant of the Chinese government is the Chinese Communist Party, they get to choose the moral system. I’m sure the great bulk of the moral system is akin to Western moral systems, but it’s around the edges that they can play.
And why is this? I am not aware of any religious group with a dominant position in Chinese society; Marx preached against any form of religion, and I do believe the Chinese followed right along in his footsteps. I found this bit interesting:
In China, anxiety about pianzi, or swindlers, runs deep. How do I know you’re not a pianzi? is a question people often ask when salespeople call on the phone or repairmen show up at the door. While my score likely didn’t put me in the ranks of pianzi, one promise of Zhima Credit was identifying those who were. Companies can buy risk assessments for users that detail whether they have paid their rent or utilities or appear on the court blacklist. For businesses, such products are billed as time-savers. On the site Tencent Video, I stumbled across an ad for Zhima Credit in which a businessman scrutinizes strangers as he rides the subway. “Everybody looks like a pianzi,” he despairs. His employees, trying to guard against shady customers, cover the office conference room walls with photos of lowlifes and criminals. But then—tada!—the boss discovers Zhima Credit, and all of their problems are solved. The staff celebrate by tearing the photos off the wall.
We don’t see this much anxiety, I hope.
And I feel no great enthusiasm for such a service in the United States. It feels like a hammer.
