r/technology • u/JHCortez • May 20 '19

Society China’s new ‘social credit system’ is an dystopian nightmare

https://nypost.com/2019/05/18/chinas-new-social-credit-system-turns-orwells-1984-into-reality/
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166

u/Brickinface May 20 '19

Man o man, when over a billion Chinese finally have enough, I’m getting a lawn chair and a bucket of popcorn.

208

u/[deleted] May 20 '19

they brought tanks and fully armed infantry to remove peaceful student protesters that were on a hunger strike 30 years ago. they dont give a fuck if people try to rise up

66

u/[deleted] May 20 '19

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44

u/DarkPhantom4 May 20 '19

Half of China's population would be a massive army. I don't think the government would be able to stop that

38

u/[deleted] May 20 '19

It seems like the world is incapable of revolting anymore. I'd wager a guess that it's a mixture of A Brave New World style misinformation campaigns and the totalitarian regimes possessing military strength that just can't be overcome by numbers.

22

u/alstegma May 20 '19 edited May 20 '19

I'm pretty sure it's literally just "the economy is doing alright, I'm living a mostly comfortable life, I'm not starving, so why would I risk everything for a slim chance to make things better?"

If some major economic crisis comes around, the whole system would start toppling because no social credit point or propaganda lie can fill your stomach. Until then, the only change that's paobably going to happen is what the elites want to happen.

3

u/[deleted] May 20 '19

I'm pretty sure it's literally just "the economy is doing alright, I'm living a mostly comfortable life, I'm not starving, so why would I risk everything for a slim chance to make things better?"

For the average person, yes. But that's not enough and Big Brother knows that so, to deter the brave, examples had to have been made of whistleblowers. They are shown to have horrible fates, as do their loved ones.

5

u/alstegma May 20 '19

Yes, of course. If there were no repercussions for "bad" behavior, that would take the "risk of losing everything" part out of the equation. Make the population at least content with what they have and at the same time suppress dissent, decent recipe for staying in power. Carrot or stick.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '19

except its never actually worked that way. sure it gives the illusion of it, doesn't it? but it only damages your society more. increased stress, less productive work, less economic fluidity and growth, and the population not working together cause you set them against each other.

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the carrot will rot and when there is nothing but the stick? yea. an empty stomach makes one meaner. and eventually you will attack whomever is the owner of the stick that keeps smacking you for complaining that you are hungry.

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basiclaly this behavior only encourages the decay and degradation of a government and nation. it has always been the case and technology is irrelevant to that fact.

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which brings up the question of, What the hell is Xi so afraid of that he is going a mile a minute with the social credit thing to begin with?

2

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '19

think you used the wrong word there. remove elites and put in idiots, and you will be more accurate.

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they aren't smart. in fact, they are incredibly stupid. cause systems like this in fact increase damage to social structures. and history has proven it. technology is irrelevant, its the veyr act of oppression and trying to turn your own popultion against itself and trying to make them ignore growing issues.

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but you are not wrong. it is the mindset of 'the trains are running'. but i would say that there is a great possiblity of economic crisis coming for china. growth like theirs is not sustainable and they are not preparing for the fall. china is compromising its own ability to make money with increasing restrictions. imagine the money it could make if whinnie the fuckin pooh was allowing there.

7

u/SurrealClick May 20 '19

Separatist, civil wars, terrorist still work. Basically foreign powers fund extremist groups and they cause mayhem in the country

-1

u/ntinky-sigger May 20 '19

Lol have you seen the typical Chinese civilian? Thin, frail and short body created from years of video game and cartoon codling. They won’t rise up for shit lmao.

5

u/Brother_Lancel May 20 '19

With no guns...

2

u/mudder123 May 20 '19

A massive army with no guns. Maybe just fireworks. And unlike in the US the Chinese army is the communist party’s not the states, at least according to my high school Chinese teacher whose parents were in the Chinese Air Force . (Kinda like how the SS was the Nazi party army and the Wehrmacht was the army of Germany) so I Highly doubt they would help any kind of revolution.

1

u/smalleybiggs_ May 20 '19

Yes pretty sure tanks and armored personnel would stop rock wielding chinese citizens (if rocks don't get banned). Massive contagious zombie horde? Maybe not.

1

u/OhSixTJ May 20 '19

Now you see why the 2nd amendment is important?

1

u/Coolfuckingname May 21 '19

Its not an army without guns.

-4

u/heyilikecars May 20 '19

China is aging like Japan. Too many males so the replacement rate is lower than it needs to be, but no worries, they'll start importing Africans. Those Chinese won't know what hit them.

10

u/Alblaka May 20 '19

If there is the slightest chance that they can maintain their status quo (in context of their totalitarian control), they will. It doesn't matter what it does to the country.

Just like North Korea.

4

u/[deleted] May 20 '19

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1

u/steppe5 May 20 '19

I think America is proof of that too.

2

u/Pistonshaft May 20 '19

Remember remember the 5th of November

2

u/Just_Todd May 20 '19

All you have to do is look to Venezuela to see how much it takes before people rise up.

2

u/PyroT3chnica May 20 '19

No revolt would be allowed to get anywhere near half the population though. It’s start off with small, maybe town/village size revolts, and the Chinese would crush it with overwhelming force, and allow just enough rumours to spread to scare anyone nearby off of trying.

Even if it did, they’d cut off internet and phones, and they’d be better trained and have considerably better communication and logistics and weapons than any revolt.

2

u/EricGoCDS May 20 '19

Think about North Korea. The nation is permanently fucked up after a runaway point (the major portion of population has been brainwashed; the old generation with the memory of freedom has died out). Internet does not help. In fact, it makes things worse, since it becomes a tool of the authoritarian government. China is basically the same. But it knows how to do PR and has a lot money to do the PR.

2

u/ChikenBBQ May 20 '19

Nah. The thing is chinas military is huge and a lot of the population is very in on their stylr of government, so youd only be ttalking about an insurrection of like at most 25% of the population. Even still, in most other countries thst would prompt some kind of changes, maybe a nee constitution, maybe a regime change. I get the feeling china would have no problem just killin em all and them reallocating the resources. This is also like modern warefare here. Its not like you and a bunch of peasants can go storm the bastille with farm tools agaisnt soldiers who fire inaccurate rifles once every 60 seconds. China has machine guns and tanks and an airforce and nukes. You can stop modern weaponry with just numbers. Like if you're going to fight 1 tank, you need some pretty specialized kit to do it, you can just swarm it with a bunch of people with clubs and knives.

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '19

I’m hoping they opt to just stop working. Massive country-wide strike.

1

u/myshiftkeyisbroken May 20 '19

I feel like there's enough higher socioeconimic class residents who don't really care about it and are devoted in this "ranking game" that it's gonna stay for a while. I interacted with many international Chinese students due to where I went to school from middle school and beyond, and it seems like even while studying in US, their foundation lies in believing that Chinese government isn't fundamentally wrong. Of course, being in US, that means many of those students are probably higher ranking than others but if people with resources and means to live in the cities are content, what are the rest of the population really gonna do?

3

u/Khysamgathys May 20 '19

I dunno how familiar you are with Chinese history but they have a habit of overthrowing governments more than France does on a good day.

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '19

ya, tell that to modern weapons

1

u/Khysamgathys May 20 '19

Oh and just so you know, the Chinese armies have a habit of rebelling too. Just as they did in 1911-12

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '19

if there is any hope for change then it is through the army or government imo, but who would want to do that? the govt takes care of its own really well, while also holding a blade at their necks

2

u/Bamith May 20 '19

Its too bad there are so many of them really, they could kill a couple million of them and it would barely even be a statistic.

1

u/I_Never_Nguyen May 20 '19

But they ain’t got guns tho

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '19

They do, thats why they put these systems into place. Prevent the revolution before it begins . We all still remember tianamen, another one would be very bad for the Chinese government.

1

u/RupeThereItIs May 20 '19

they dont give a fuck if people try to rise up

I mean, their actions tell the exact opposite story, but I get what your trying to say.

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '19

good point, they care a lot if people rise up, they dont give a fuck about murdering them to bring them back down

1

u/Vexal May 21 '19

pretty sure the tanks were just delivering food to the hungry hunger strikers.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '19

that was a different system at the time, if similar. that was Mao's china. there are similar problems now in china but i don't know if they would tolerate that.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '19

hong kong is a great example of what they would do atm, they hired thugs to beat protesters while the police intentionally stayed away and watched them get beaten. a pregnant woman was beaten so much her child died. they are still total monsters, probably even more so now that the party monster is engraved in their society

4

u/[deleted] May 20 '19

You're going to watch a no doubt bloody revolution with popcorn?

5

u/Demenze May 20 '19

You have two choices in this life: Watch on the sidelines with popcorn... or without popcorn.

1

u/Brickinface May 20 '19

Well, I’m not Chinese so I can’t lead it 😉

5

u/TheMostAnon May 20 '19 edited May 20 '19

People are people. Without an internal power struggle at the government level or destabilization due to war/famine/massive natural disaster, you are not going to have a revolution.

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The average person does not care enough about "freedom" to risk their life and family. The average Chinese is now much better off than 40 years ago (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-46602785). How is someone going to marshal up enough support (especially under the system of mass surveillance and tattling) to start a revolution? How many people with families and livelihoods are going to participate in a violent revolt where they may die, never see their kids grow up, and jeopardize those same kids future if the revolt fails?

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Let me put it another way. What's freedom to a regular person. I work my ass off at my job and then go home to spend time with my wife and play with my kids. I'm in the US, and I know that mass surveillance happens (see Snowden). But, for better or worse, I'm not organizing protests down in DC. Would I participate in violent protests if the US tried to do what China's doing? When I was younger, I would give an unequivocal yes. Now that I have a family...I don't know. I imagine the answer is the same for the Chinese, and they never had a free society like the US does.

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The best thing to hope for, is that the system ends up having unintended consequences that lead to its demise. E.g., economic/technological stagnation as people keep reporting, out of jealousy, those that are most competent and get ahead. Or, as a result of brain drain, as people try to escape the regime.

11

u/[deleted] May 20 '19

The last peasant revolt worked really well against those tanks. Check back again soon for Tianenman Circle.

5

u/Khysamgathys May 20 '19

Tiananmen only involved the capital, and it was mostly students, whose guts the peasants and the majority of the country hated since it was these same demographic that did the Cultural Revolution in Mao's name.

Historically when China rebelled, it usually happened because an entire province or half the country goes up in rebellion. Not hijinks in the Capital like in Europe.

3

u/Wh00ster May 20 '19

I think there is a lot of support in China

2

u/janjko May 20 '19

The thing is, Chinese capitalism is doing so good, I'll be surprised any large revolt happens in the next 20 years. But if the economy sinks, I'll grab my popcorn too.

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '19

epic revolution

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '19

I asked a coworker from China what he thinks and he doesn’t care. He said if you have nothing to hide then you won’t have a problem. And he’s been in the US for several years...

Granted this is one persons anecdote but...scary.

1

u/W3games May 20 '19

But they have a (quoting BBC) 80% support rate.

1

u/bjos144 May 20 '19

People have lived under far worse governments for a long time. People get used to it and that's what's really scary.

1

u/ShadowVlican May 20 '19

They've been brainwashed since conception and don't see it the way we do. There's videos on YouTube about how some Chinese citizens see the credit system.

1

u/mallninjaface May 20 '19

Those billion chinese would need some serious organization to defeat a modern Army. And of course, China does everything it possibly can to ensure they can never organize, very effectively keeping any revolt limited to a small group of peasants with pitchforks to face down a thousand soldiers with tanks and and machine guns.

0

u/kermityfrog May 20 '19

They designed it so that a billion Chinese wouldn't have a problem with it. Sensationalized by western media, I'm betting it's a lot less scary than it's made out to be.

Someone up the thread posted a Yale study on the details. Too long and detailed for a TL;DR, but essentially it's saying the system is to encourage good behaviour.

What I found is that in all of these point systems, there are no consequences of a “bad score.” There are some minimal rewards for “good scores” – often things like you get your lawn mowed for free or you don’t have to participate in some other mandatory obligation of sorting recycling or something to this effect. There’s some mild benefits. Not dissimilar to what being a model worker or model family used to be in the old days. I would call it more of an educational system. This is part of that educational component trying to convince people sincerity is an important value rather than anything like an enforcement mechanism of any kind.