Imagine calling a friend. Only instead of hearing a ring tone you hear a police siren, and then a voice intoning, “Be careful in your dealings with this person.”

Would that put a damper on your relationship? It’s supposed to.

Welcome to life in China’s “Social Credit System,” where a low score can ruin your life in more ways than one.

Say you arrive at the Beijing airport, intending to catch a flight to Canton 1,200 miles south. The clerk at the ticket counter turns you away because — you guessed it — your social credit score is too low.

Not only are you publicly humiliated in the ticket line, you are then forced to travel by slow train. What should have been a three-hour flight becomes a 30-hour, stop-and-go nightmare.

All because the government has declared you untrustworthy. Perhaps you defaulted on a loan, made the mistake of criticizing some government policy online or just spent too much time playing video games on the internet. All of these actions, and many more, can cause your score to plummet, forcing citizens onto the most dreaded rung on China’s deadbeat caste system, the laolai.

And the punishments are shocking. The government algorithm will go as far as to install an “embarrassing” ring tone on the phones of laolai, shaming them every time they get a call in public.

But an embarrassing ring tone, flight bans and slow trains are just the beginning of the dystopian nightmare that is now daily life in China for tens of millions of people.

A low social credit score will exclude you from well-paid jobs, make it impossible for you to get a house or a car loan or even book a hotel room. The government will slow down your internet connection, ban your children from attending private schools and even post your profile on a public blacklist for all to see.

According to Australia’s ABC News, the government has produced a “Deadbeat Map” via an app on WeChat, which shows a radar-style graphic identifying every laolai in the vicinity of the user.

“Tapping on a person marked on the map reveals their personal information, including their full name, court-case number and the reason they have been labeled untrustworthy. Identity-card numbers and home addresses are also partially shown,” ABC reported.

There are reports that those whose social credit score falls too low are preemptively arrested and sent to re-education camps. Not because they have actually committed a crime, but because they are likely to.

Elements of the system are in place throughout China, as the government refines its algorithm, and the final rollout is scheduled to be in place nationwide by 2020.

The government claims that its purpose is to enhance trust and social stability by creating a “culture of sincerity” that will “restore social trust.”

What it will actually create, of course, is a culture of fear and a nation of informants.

This is because one of the ways that people can improve their own social credit score is to report on the supposed misdeeds of others.

Read full story here…

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The common slogan in China is: “whoever violates the rules somewhereshall be restricted everywhere.” Punishment is already happening on a broad scale. Chinese authorities have already banned more than 10 million people deemed “untrustworthy” from boarding flights and high-speed trains. It’s actually really easy to watch your SCS drop. Hang out with someone with a low score, and your own will go down.

Some well-informed Americans may be aware of China’s horrifying “Social Credit System” that was recently unveiled as a method of eradicating any dissent in the totalitarian state. Essentially freezing out anyone who does not conform to the state’s version of the ideal citizen, the SCS is perhaps the most frightening control system being rolled out today. That is, until you consider what is coming next.

Your bags are packed, your rooms are booked, you’re all set for your vacation; there’s just one problem, the government has canceled your tickets.As early as 2014, China began conceptualizing a Social Credit System (SCS), sort of like a credit score for citizen behavior where behaviors deemed good for society are rewarded with privileges and bad behaviors result in a poor score and loss of privileges. China has since been working to test its new method of population control and has been slowly conscripting citizens into the system. Now, a new report acquired by the Associated Press, suggests millions of would-be travelers had their plans canceled as a result of the SCS in 2018.

Virtually everything that you do online and offline is being monitored, tracked or recorded by someone.  Could you imagine what life would be like if the government compiled all of that information into a giant database and used it to punish those that had engaged in politically-incorrect behavior? 

Millions of Chinese individuals and businesses have been labelled as untrustworthy on an official blacklist banning them from any number of activities, including accessing financial markets or travelling by air or train, as the use of the government’s social credit system accelerates.

China has banned millions of people from any number of activities for being labeled as 'untrustworthy' on the country's Orwellian social credit system. Banned from things such as air and train travel, blacklisted individuals are being punished in a broad effort to boost "trustworthiness" among the 1.4 billion Chinese citizens tracked by the massive system - which assigns both positive and negative scores to various metrics, reports SCMP.  

So you’re familiar with China’s social credit system by now, right? You know, the one that I’ve been talking about for years? The one we had a sneak preview of 8 years ago in “You Are Being Gamed?” The one that’s being trial-ballooned at home via Carrot Rewards and other “motivational” point systems?