this is a system china has used for a decade now. it has become normalized and its main shape is set, but it has turned people against each other and poured gasoline on an already rotten moral landscape.
don’t treat it like a black mirror episode that only affects citizens. that ship sailed a long time ago. it is not limited to individuals. companies, vehicles, public agencies, public services, all have different credit frameworks managed by different ministries.
for example the people’s bank of china tracks financial credit records, the ministry of transport records drivers and logistics companies’ violations, and the supreme people’s court collects criminal and legal violations. each agency feeds data into national and provincial platforms and those records are later shared across administrative levels for scoring.
the state also gets data from private companies for the commercial side. the famous sesame credit is run by a private company. that company watches millions of businesses tied to supposedly private groups like alibaba and tencent and shares that data with the relevant ministries. on paper it sounds reasonable and rational, right? yeah it sounds smart. you think wow what a system they built, but the reality is not so clean.
say a driver didn’t stop for pedestrians at a crosswalk. the transport ministry lowers the vehicle and driver’s traffic score. a criminal court could lower the driver’s overall credit score in addition to license penalties. if the vehicle belongs to a company, the company’s score drops a bit as well. so the citizen, the vehicle, and the company all get penalized in a chain. the citizen gets yelled at by the company, the state, and traffic police. sure, that motivates someone to not repeat the mistake.
but this system, which seems logical in theory, is full of gaps and errors. first, it ignores human context like in the example above. in a country like china there are so many people who will exploit those gaps. conditioning citizens like pavlov’s dogs to obey the system does more harm than good.
on top of that, when people do good deeds they often do them for points. and if they think doing something will cost them points, they will avoid doing it. so instead of a real moral conscience you get a reflex to chase points. a culture of surveillance and snitching spreads. people are constantly encouraged to report each other. that kills empathy. if you want another show analogy, think squid game.
exploiting these gaps is common and happens all the time. for example, if you hit a pedestrian in china your worry is not just your credit score. you must cover that person’s entire expenses. because of this, some drivers try to run over victims multiple times to kill them. yes you read that right. i am not joking.
if you kill them and are not tried for murder, you only pay funeral costs. if the person survives you have to pay all medical costs plus hush money to avoid a public lawsuit and those sums can be huge. you might close a death case with 50,000 dollars, but if the victim lives the compensation could reach 500,000 dollars. there are dozens of reports and videos about this online.
meanwhile, fake pedestrian scams are common in china. that’s why many cars install multi-angle camera systems. even if cameras record the incident and you are right, a scammer can still file a complaint and it can affect your social credit. the appeals process exists but it is slow and bureaucratic. and since there is no independent watchdog, even if you are right you might not be able to prove it.
this system has deeply damaged neighborhood, family, and institutional trust. mao and the cultural revolution already wounded china’s guanxi culture, the personal connection networks people used to rely on. villagers used to have tight bonds. those bonds shrank down to family and close friends, and now the system is even attacking the last safe zone, the family.
so if a man doesn’t beat his wife, it may be because he fears a complaint will lower his score rather than because of moral principles. china no longer has a natural trust or universal morality. instead there is a system that treats everyone as a potential risk. people even avoid helping obviously injured strangers because they might be scammers. scammers exploit those gaps to the fullest.
there is also a status and class angle. this supposedly equal, communist, socialist country has well-known rigid social classes. i won’t even get into oppressed ethnic minorities who in some cases aren’t treated as fully human. there is a de facto hukou system and an untouchable elite of ccp members. take families of former princely lines, called taizidang. no one touches them. their social credit never drops.
say a boss from this class sexually harasses his secretary and fires her because she refused. then someone writes a complaint about the woman. she won’t just lose her job or be slandered. the system will publicly shame her on giant led screens with her name and photo, making her life even harder.
they don’t stop at name and photo. they post home addresses. they’ll claim she sold company data or robbed the till. those specifics don’t matter. what matters is the system offers no help for the poor. if your credit was already low, a single strike can ruin you. you become ostracized, can’t buy bread at the grocery, might not be able to ride the bus. the victim is the poor person again and that is exactly the black mirror part.
even before the system came online these people had a hard life. civil service used to be miserable. now it’s worse because the credit system creates a special tier for state employees. i’m not saying public servants can’t trade on the stock market like in other countries. even getting a passport is subject to state control.
for example if you are a random civil servant and want to travel abroad you must apply to your superiors and to the communist party. they review it and if they approve they tell you how many days you can go. if you get a week you must take your passport to your boss, get a signed stamp, then return the passport after a week. in strategic sectors even family members need permission to travel.
civil servants absolutely cannot participate in religious ceremonies, go to hajj, or visit church. opening a foreign bank account, buying property abroad, or sending children for long-term education is banned or needs prior approval. these days even using a vpn is grounds for investigation. people can lose their jobs for accessing twitter. how do they know? because being a civil servant often requires installing government apps on your phone. they literally know everything down to the color of the mess you made.
state workers must get permission before publishing academic papers, giving press interviews, attending foreign conferences, or appearing on podcasts. even having an alcoholic relative affects your record and social credit. you can be penalized because your brother-in-law is a scumbag. as i said, civil servants have a separate discipline scoring system that affects salary, promotion, and loyalty measures.
it will only tighten more in the future and it will hit the lower classes hardest. almost every device we use today is electric and networked. if your electric car’s score drops it could be disabled until you raise it or pay your fine. in a country where even a hand towel in a restroom might work with face recognition or fingerprint control, none of this is far-fetched.
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