There is a story about an ambitious young woman who games her social credit score only to see it quickly collapse through bad choices and bad behavior. Variation on an old classic, you might say. Very Wuthering Heights. But this was the plot of a 2016 episode from the popular Black Mirror TV series, a dark comedy one-off called “Nosedive.”
The episode appeared just a year after China’s communists introduced a headline-grabbing social credit system. Ever since, some apologists have felt the need to distinguish “Nosedive” from the communist rating scheme as they defend the latter.
In 2018, a Foreign Policy headline asserted that “China’s Orwellian Social Credit Score Isn’t Real: Blacklists and monitoring systems are nowhere close to Black Mirror fantasies.”
As late as 2022, Technology Review claimed that for most of us living outside China, “the words ‘social credit system’ conjure up an instant image: a Black Mirror–esque web of technologies that automatically score all Chinese citizens according to what they did right and wrong. But the reality is, that terrifying system doesn’t exist, and the central government doesn’t seem to have much appetite to build it, either.”
Local–national
In defending Beijing, these fact checkers deal in half-truths. The system was rolled out at the regional, not national, level; so, yes, a national system “doesn’t exist.” But the—local—“blacklists and monitoring systems” can far exceed what is shown in “Nosedive.” When penalties accrue, they can be terrifying no matter which level of government is imposing them.
NPR offered the case of a Mr. Lao Duan, who upon visiting his bank “found out that all of his accounts and credit cards had been frozen. And one morning when Lao Duan was driving through the center of town, he discovered another aspect of being on the untrustworthy list. On one of the electronic billboards by the side of the road was his face.”
As to the notion that “the central government doesn’t seem to have much appetite to build” the terrifying Black Mirror–esque systems—the systems that have in fact been deployed locally are data aggregators, collecting from various distributed sources, including national ones. They are test beds, as are the business ranking systems. In 2015, BBC reported that by 2020, “everyone in China will be enrolled in a vast national database that compiles fiscal and government information, including minor traffic violations, and distills it into a single number ranking each citizen. That system isn’t in place yet.”
By 2022, Business Insider could say: “It’s not a unified, nationwide system, but China plans on eventually making it mandatory for everyone.” As of two years ago, “an estimated 80 percent of provinces, regions and cities had introduced some version of the system.”
That’s not everyone but getting close. And with that level of coverage, it is a national system de facto.
“Integrity”
One early gambit to deflect opprobrium from Beijing was to declare that its social credit system was merely a business-centric rating system similar to what we have in the market economies, something like Moody’s. But in those early days, business credit was just the first phase of the rollout.
When we go back to the beginning or even earlier, say 2014, we find that “Key areas of focus in the construction of China’s social credit system include political integrity, business integrity, social integrity and judicial credibility.”
Political integrity: when you have communists defining political integrity, what could go wrong?
“Rongcheng, one of the pilot cities for China’s federal-level social credit score system, runs its own social credit system…. Those with lower social credit scores—and in the extreme case, those blacklisted by the government—have restricted access to economic resources.” Sort of like a low ESG rating for businesses in America, except that in China the rating sticks: “As a notice signed by various government ministries and the Supreme People’s Court states, the system is built on the philosophy of ‘once untrustworthy, always restricted.’ ”
Too many traffic tickets, unpaid fines, bankruptcy, lack of “political integrity,” any troublemaking in general will restrict one’s access to banking and public services. The low scores generate public shunning and hobble employment options. Being downrated becomes a life-changing experience.
EU values?
Just as there are (or were) defenders of this system in the press, so there are actual admirers of China’s social credit program.
One author noted that China’s social credit system “has fundamentally reshaped global notions of surveillance, making it into European Union legislation.” In fact, in 2022, Bologna implemented its own app-based social credit system. “Social credit scores are related to a resident’s level of compliance to the norms of the region and denial or acceptance of the same.”
Are you conforming to the norms of your community—as defined by the party in power? Puts a new light on “EU values,” doesn’t it? “The residents will be assessed based on their level of compliance.”
The fatal flaw in the Italian scheme was its opt-in feature. Perhaps this is why we no longer see stories about the Bologna social credit app. Unfortunately, lack of public interest will not stop Red China’s march beyond 80 percent coverage.
There is resistance to ESG scoring in the U.S. May it continue. But it is unlikely that we have seen the last of this nonsense in the West. □
James Roth works for a major defense contractor in Virginia.
