Yesterday, both Wired and the Washington Post wrote extensively about plans the Chinese government have to use big data to track and rank their citizens. The proposed Social Credit System (SCS) is currently being piloted with a view to a full rollout in 2020. Like a real-life episode of Charlie Brooker’s dystopian Black Mirror series, the new system incentivizes social obedience whilst punishing behaviors which are not deemed becoming of a “good citizen”. Here’s the (terrifying) run down:

• Each citizen will have a “citizen score” which will indicate their trustworthiness. This score will also be publicly ranked against the entire population, influencing prospects for jobs, loan applications, and even love.
• Eight commercial partners are involved in the pilot, two of which are data giants with interests in social media and messaging, loans, insurance, payments, transport, and online dating.
• Though the “complex algorithm” used to generate a score by partner Sesame Credit has not been revealed, we do know there are five factors being taken into account:
  1. Credit history
  2. Ability to fulfil contract obligations
  3. The verification of “personal characteristics” (e.g. phone number, address etc.)
  4. Behavior and preference
  5. Interpersonal relationships
• “Behavior and preferences” considers patterns of behavior and how they reflect upon the individual. For example, someone who plays ten hours of video games each day would be considered idle, whereas someone who buys lots of diapers would be considered a responsible parent.
• “Interpersonal relationships” allows assessors to rate interactions between friends and family. Nice messages about the government are likely to help your score, but it can also be negatively affected by things your friends post online.

How do incentives work?

Well, just like the “NoseDive” episode of Black Mirror, there big benefits for model citizens:

• 600 points: Congrats! Take out a Just Spend loan of up to 5,000 yuan (for use on the scheme’s partner sites).
• 650 points: Hurrah! You can rent out a car without placing a deposit, experience faster check-ins at hotels and even experience VIP check-in at Beijing Airport.
• 666 points +: There’s nothing sinister about this threshold! Enjoy! You can take out a loan of up to 50,000 yuan (from a partner organization).
• 700 points: Yowzers! You can go to Singapore without armfuls of supporting documentation.
• 750 points: Big dog! You can be fast-tracked in applying for a pan-European Schengen visa.

What about bad citizens?

If you fall short of government expectations, you can expect to know about it. Here’s how they plan to lower your quality of life:

• Difficulty renting cars
• Poor employment opportunities (including being forbidden from some jobs)
• Issues borrowing money from legitimate lenders
• Slower internet speeds
• Restricted access to restaurants, nightclubs and golf clubs
• Less likely to get a date (high points profiles are more prominent on dating websites)
• Removal of the right to travel freely abroad
• Problems with securing rental accommodation
• Restrictions enrolling children in certain schools

You can read more detail and commentary here, but I’ve tried to present the basics.

This system takes no excuses and makes no effort to collect feedback. If, unpreventably, your score suffers a knock, then it is simply “tough luck”. It’s not difficult to see how it will entrench disadvantage and, in all likelihood, create a delineated two-tier society.

If someone you’re connected to (perhaps a relative) reduces your score by behaving “inappropriately” online or over a messenger, this could lead to your being denied a job, which in turn will reduce your chances of gaining credit, getting a rental apartment, a partner…etc etc. It’s difficult to escape the domino effect or imagine how an individual might recover enough to live a decent life in a system where each misdemeanor seems to lead to another compounding circumstance.

We can legitimately speculate that Chinese society, from 2020, will be one in which citizens heavily police each other, disconnect themselves (in every way) from the poor/low-scoring, report indiscretions at the drop of a hat for fear of association and reprisals, and adopt phoney behaviors in order to “game” their way to full state approval. Some have described it as a form of “nudging”, but nudge techniques still leave room for choice. This seems much more coercive.

Finally, some have argued that, although the Chinese SCS system seems extreme, it actually employs techniques that are already being used by internet giants to map our own behaviors as we speak. The Chinese system simply adds a positive or negative valence to these actions and distills them into a single score. Therefore, it is worth considering which elements of SCS we find unpalatable – if any at all – and reflecting upon whether we already assent to, or participate in, similar evaluations already…