China’s social credit score system exists because after their rapid urbanization the business community started complaining that they needed a way to know who can be trusted to pay back loans. At the same time the cities were full of people who were used to knowing all their neighbors and were now surrounded by strangers that they didn’t trust. The Chinese government framed both of these problems as the same thing - a crisis of trust - and presented the social credit score as the solution. It was just a copy of the United States’ credit score system but dressed up in socialist buzzwords to make it more palatable to the people, so it was really just meant to solve the first problem while pretending to solve the latter. The “social” aspects of the social credit score (subtracting points when someone commits a crime, public disturbance, etc.) are inconsistently applied across various localities and practically vestigial, most Chinese are not even aware that they exist. It’s ironic that this socialist coat of paint on one of the most capitalistic elements in the Chinese economy makes Americans think it’s dystopian, while in reality the most dystopian parts of it are the ways that it’s identical to our credit system.
I cannot emphasize enough how much air would be sucked out of our propaganda overnight if china just fucking uncensored the internet and truly protected freedom of speech and information.
I mean judging by how cooked the brains of so many western people are with internet conspiracies like qanon, I’m not sure that would be the result of deregulation
That is pretty wild. I didn’t know any of this … I just thought “communist dystopia is dystopian”. The fact that you can take a hit to the credit score for engaging in protests and demonstrations is still scary … no one show this to Republicans.
Just orientalist vibes, no sources in sight.
In a world where credit is allocated on the basis of trust, all credit is social credit
Reminds me of the anime PsychoPass.
Noone actually forces you to live in debt. It should be last resort, but people in US finance everything
Noone actually forces you to live in debt
Oh damn I didn’t know they made housing and healthcare free, that’s dope as fuck
Come on like half of car sales in US are financed.
You know that Healthcare and housing is the last resort I’m talking about - where you have no other option.
The US is reliant on cars, but many people cannot afford buying them outright or low-interest loans. This is by design, not choice.
Bullshit. Used car market exists since the invention of a car. If you need a vehicle that will drive your ass from point A to the point B you absolutely have no need to buy a brand new one.
The used car market is volitile, regional, and often close to new in price. Stop blaming systemic issues on actions of individuals. I’m not saying that it’s impossible for one to make poor financial decisions, but instead that the very system is designed around maximizing profits squeezed from the working classes.
No you don’t understand you can just become homeless and then let yourself die of preventable causes.
No you don’t understand you can just become homeless
Isn’t that illegal in the US
I wouldn’t be surprised but I am neither amerikkkan nor have I looked into that.
Only if you insist on sleeping.
Sleeping is authoritarian
but people in US finance everything
Damn I wonder why they do that. Must have nothing to do poverty. /s
Im gonna say it, I’m sick and tired of hearing people talk about “evil Chinese authoritarian social credit system” when its inherently a good system that works. In the west when a corporation commits mass fraud and abuse they pay a minimal fine (sometimes they don’t even pay) and then they literally just get away with it. Chinas social credit system on the other hand actually holds businesses accountable.
I’m willing to say I’m not happy with either system. Corporations should pay and be held accountable but citizens should have a right to privacy and not have the sum of their actions turned into a number.
citizens should have a right to privacy and not have the sum of their actions turned into a number.
That “number” isn’t real. China does not have a single nationwide “social credit score” that rates every citizen.
What actually exists is a set of legal blacklists, the most famous being the court judgment defaulter list (失信被执行人). It applies to people who refuse to comply with a court decision, usually things like unpaid debts.
If you ignore a court order, the court can place you under a high-consumption restriction (限制高消费). That means you can’t spend money on certain luxury services (first-class train tickets, flights, five-star hotels, or other high-end purchases) until you comply with the judgment.
You can still travel normally, stay in regular hotels, work, shop, and live your life. The restriction is specifically designed to stop people who refuse to obey court rulings from enjoying luxury spending while ignoring their legal obligations.
The popular idea in the west that everyone in China has a constantly changing personal “score” based on everyday behavior is simply western fantasy.
God the more and more I hear about China the more based it is.
President Xi Jinping save us all
I’m impressed. The US legal system is incredibly anemic when it comes to punishing corporations for violating workers’ rights. I hope we really can achieve a multipolar world, one where a standard like this is upheld to emulate, and not the rotten neoliberal legal morass of the West.
That’s because the US like pretty much all the western world is a dictatorship of capital why would capital willingly discipline itself. China is a dictatorship of the proletariat hence the constant crackdowns on unruly capital and capitalists that is impossible in the west.
Of course. I wasn’t suggesting otherwise. I just hope CIA propaganda loses any appeal it may have outside of the imperial core. As for inside the core, it’s hard for me not to feel ‘doomer’ about the state of the working class. I think there would have to be a sudden, extreme change in material conditions before the working class would start to ‘wake up’ en masse here.
Corporations should pay and be held accountable
No. The board and the directors should be personally responsible, and should be punished in addition to the corporation paying money at the minimum.
You should be happy to know then that the social credit score only applies to corporations and individuals who do business with the government as contractors, it doesn’t apply to private life and doesn’t make anything illegal that wasn’t already legally punishable (even then minor crimes aren’t covered).
Yeah the made up system that doesn’t exist in the real world is really fucking scary OMG.
When will Westerners realize that the common characture of the brainwashed, thought controlled, information controlled, constantly surveiled citizen that we attribute to China/The USSR/etc… IS US?! You clutch your pearls at people in other countries potentially being treated like that but are inclined to do nothing about OUR country treating US like that.
You can be against US and Chinese fascism simultaneously.
In what way is China fascist? It’s a socialist country, public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy and the working classes control the state.
Surveillance and political suppression for one. Media, journalism, etc.
That’s not what fascism means, especially when these are used against capitalists most of all, and not against the working classes nearly as much. Fascism is capitalism violently entrenching itself when it finds itself in crisis, it isn’t when a socialist state uses state power to keep capitalists under control and expropriate their property.
That’s not what fascism is either lol
I wouldn’t call china fascist, though doubtlessly authoritarian. But I don’t have nearly as much info on china, it seems to me the persecution of minorities is less of a central political scapegoat and more some weird side thing. But without speaking chinese, I might be wrong. The US had plenty of fascist characteristics at this point and is rather open about the persecution.
The US is fascist because it’s in crisis. Imperialism is decaying and austerity is being brought inward.
I’m not trying to fuss over what to call something. My intended point stands.
It doesn’t, though. Socialism is not fascism, and all socialist states need to exert authority against capitalists and fascists to continue to exist. Class harmony is a lie.
My point is that the forms of oppression that occur in China aren’t exclusive to the capitalist class, and remain something I oppose.
Which stands.
Authoritarianism, violent oppression of minorites and dissenting movements, deeply ingrained surveillance state with state censorship.
But those are actions of the US empire. Projecting them onto China isn’t a good thing
China does not violently oppress minorities, and wielding state authority, censorship, and surveilance against capitalists and fascists is necessary for a socialist state, and doesn’t make it fascist. Fascism is capitalism violently defending itself from decay and solidifying bourgeois control, not proletarian.
But enough about the US.
Chinese fascism
Just say you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Nice argument.
You didn’t make one you just stated something wildly incorrect so why should I take the time to give you a well thought out response trying to explain how truly idiotic is?
I did make one, that you can oppose two things at the same time.
I could explain, but wait, you already said that authoritarianism was meaningless to you. If it doesn’t matter to you, well, seems pointless to try to convince that it is actually fascist.
You’re on lemmy.ml psst they really like chinese authoritarian oppression. (and I’m being honest given the current state and future of the US they’re probably better off indeed, but that doesn’t make them good)
I like it when the working classes in China wield the state against capitalists and fascists, and to ensure that social surplus is directed towards social ends above all else.
What do you actually know about China?
“authoritarian oppression” entirely meaningless when stripped of context.
You have to be a troll.
You can appose 2 things
Sure not what I took issue with. I took issue with you calling China fascist which is just an untrue statement.
Authoritarian is a pejorative. All countries and states in class society are “authoritarian” by necessity. Fascism is a specific thing arising from the tendency for the rate of profit to decline in capitalist society.
You can keep insisting I’m a troll if it helps you deal with not being able to engage with arguments.
China is authoritarian, but authoritarianism doesn’t matter to you, so that shouldn’t matter to you. Consistency, please.
And no, countries aren’t “authoritarian” by necessity. Even if some amount of policies etc that would be considered such exist everywhere, you have countries that are freer and countries that have more political suppression, censorship of media outlets, etc etc.
China does censor it’s media—political and entertainment— heavily. Just one small example.
A Russian is on an airliner heading to the US, and the American in the seat next to him asks, “So what brings you to the US?” The Russian replies, “I’m studying the American approach to propaganda.” The American says, “What propaganda?” The Russian says, “That’s what I mean.”
Snowden showed they realized but didn’t care
and the epstien files have shown us how little americans care about anything besides themselves.
The Chinese credit system is western propaganda there is nothing like it as described in western media.
I’m not comparing the systems or saying it’s better, but you don’t need a credit rating to get a mortgage on a home in the US and are doing yourself a disservice repeating that talking point.
If you don’t have a credit rating they’ll ask for other evidences you are able to pay off a 15-30 year loan like consistent and not missing payments on a phone, rent, utilities, internet, etc steady employment, bigger down payment. it’s called manual underwriting or a non traditional mortgage application.
Have fun with the interest rate you’ll get. You’ll inherently be a higher risk than someone with a good credit score.
It’s much more difficult to secure a mortgage that way and you will be paying exploitive interest rates. It’s like saying offering up collateral or buying a house outright is path to home ownership- something the vast majority of homebuyers can not do.
Most people that don’t have a credit rating don’t have the secondary information they’ll ask for to do the manual underwriting process, and it seems nobody publishes direct data sets on no credit rating loans, but I did find some estimates at around 0.5-2% that’s still thousands of mortgages a year but not really significant amount overall.
I thought it was closer to 8-10% but that was bullshit after looking into it more to get the numbers above, and if it’s only 2% then I’ll rescind the original statement & stand corrected, that’s for any practical measure a requirement.
If you treat your credit card like your debit card, you can get 3% off literally everything. As long as you don’t spend more than you make, you’ll never owe interest.
I have enough credit, I can by a whole car with the swipe of a card. I’ll never have to wonder about underwriting or proving myself. I’ve already done so to my bank. And if I ever decide to do that, I’ll have zero down and zero interest for 6 months.
Man, what world you live in?
Not to minimize how fucked the US is, but this is true to some degree. There’s a lot of ways to get a mortgage with lower credit, with or without federal and state grants. Most people could probably get approved for a mortgage.
Now, getting approved for a mortgage that’s large enough to afford anything near your work is a bigger question. But if you can afford to live in a cheaper area and have consistent income, it’s worth checking to see if escaping the rent trap is a possibility.
All of the ID verification, posing as age verification, legislation is for better thought monitoring of social credit too.
False dichotomy. Both of these things suck.
China IS authoritarian.
Silly proletarian, that’s not even the credit score they use for home loans
There is no social credit system
Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax are awful entities that I never consented to share my personal financial data with. But one wrong doesn’t justify another. Personally I think a score by private data brokers to judge creditworthiness is less harm than a score by your government to judge social worthiness but both are harm.
The idea of a social worthiness score doesn’t exist in China, though. They have a system largely for penalizing corporations and businesses that are caught skirting regulations, and a limited system for catching those who commit tax fraud and other crimes.
They have a system largely for penalizing corporations and businesses that are caught skirting regulations
The core mechanism is the court “judgment defaulter” blacklist (失信被执行人) and related high-consumption restrictions (限制高消费), which are imposed when someone refuses to comply with a legally effective court judgment, such as paying a debt or damages ordered by the court. The penalty mainly restricts luxury or non-essential spending (flights, first-class train seats, luxury hotels, tourism, etc.) until the judgment is fulfilled. In law it applies to any individual or company, and if a company is the debtor the restrictions can extend to its legal representative or responsible managers on top of any accounts registered to the company. In practice 99.99% of cases involve businesses because most court enforcement actions arise from commercial disputes (contracts, loans, wages, suppliers, etc.), so the mechanism ends up being an enforcement mechanism against business owners and managers to push them to settle judgments properly, but legally it’s just a court enforcement tool against anyone who refuses to comply with a court ruling.
Ah, gotcha, thanks for the clarification!
How do you make businesses (i.e. the corporations) unable to access luxury? Sounds like an individual-level policy being applied to the organization.
It’s applied to bank accounts. If you owe a debt ordered by the court (99.99% businesses) you can’t use your business accounts to buy luxuries, it is often also applied to the individual owner/management of the company as well so they can neither use personal or business accounts to live a life of luxury while owing debts to people.
If you’re in a position to make decisions for a non-compliant corporation, then it does indeed become personal, but you can opt out of the C-suite at any time, or you can get your company in compliance.
Edit to add: You may not like it, but this is what peak dictatorship of the proletariat looks like.
