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For now at least, China's citizens are embracing social-credit systems

bloomberg.com

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Re: For now at least, China's citizens are embracing social-credit systems

#31

Post by lnsru »

vbtemp wrote: post #16
teekert wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm certainly no expert but isn't it only cheating by western standards? Wouldn't it be interesting to have a culture that doesn't conform to that standard and see how it fares? Imho it's like a society where everything is GPL-ed, is it really so wrong? Sure social credit etc are horrible imo but I fail to see that the copying of smart ideas without punishment is inherently wrong. It's non-capitalistic, but inherentl…

This soft bigotry against Chinese culture is really tiring already. Chinese culture and people are all over the world: America, southeast Asia, singapore, and so many other places... To think that cheating and IP theft and scams is somehow part of Chinese culture or that these are virtues unqiue to these exotic orientals and we should drop our Western preconceptions is so unbelievably condescending... And how offensi…

I would say, IP theft and cheating is a communist thing. I was born in Soviet Union. Since the ruling class were the simple workers and not engineers there is no motivation for these to do world class things. The don’t get fame, credits and wealth. So the government must get all advanced technology by stealing. I case of Eastern Germany everything was copied from the West: stolen,reverse engineered and released as domestic product couple years later. Whole industry was 1-2 generations behind free world.

Re: For now at least, China's citizens are embracing social-credit systems

#32

Post by ajdlinux »

onion2k wrote: post #7

As the article itself points out, the Chinese media is full of stories about Chinese people being targets of scams by food producers, eCommerce companies selling fakes, and scams by one another (dating scams and so on). These social-credit surveillance programs have been marketed to the people they're aimed at as a benefit that protects them from potential crime. It's the same everywhere - here in the UK we have the…

> People respond well to things that make them feel safer, regardless of whether they're actually safer

So as privacy advocates, what do we say if we see a highly intrusive surveillance system that does make people actually safer?

It's entirely possible that a highly intrusive surveillance system could well be extremely effective in combatting crime - and I mean the "universally-agreed" crimes, not political crimes - as well as providing spying capabilities to keep the population in check. Now I don't know what impact Social Credit has on crime rates, but it's not self-evidently a stupid idea in that regard.

Re: For now at least, China's citizens are embracing social-credit systems

#33

Post by mmsimanga »

onion2k wrote: post #7

As the article itself points out, the Chinese media is full of stories about Chinese people being targets of scams by food producers, eCommerce companies selling fakes, and scams by one another (dating scams and so on). These social-credit surveillance programs have been marketed to the people they're aimed at as a benefit that protects them from potential crime. It's the same everywhere - here in the UK we have the…

As someone who lived under a dictatorship I would argue that China and UK aren't the same thing. It sounds the same but it isn't. Smart dictators never break any laws. A clamp down on protestors is always described as protecting law abiding citizens from rowdy protestors. I bet if someone did text analysis of report written by police from democratic country Vs dictatorship who both had to break up a riot the language would be the same. The only difference would be the number of dead people. It's common for dictators to "remind" people of their power by killing a few.

Re: For now at least, China's citizens are embracing social-credit systems

#34

Post by abhiminator »

Nice article. I highly recommend watching Martin Jacques' TED talk [0] on this subject. It's interesting how people in China view the State as an intimate part of their family instead of something of an invasion, in contrast to societies in the West; which, I suspect, may be because of their collectivist roots.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imhUmLtlZpw

Re: For now at least, China's citizens are embracing social-credit systems

#35

Post by bobthepanda »

ekianjo wrote: post #25
new_here wrote: post #15

Interesting article about a topic that Westerners generally find dystopian. However, it didn’t make much mention about how this system can and has been abused to punish dissidents (e.g. feminists) and how citizens with low social credit can redeem themselves. From other articles about cases I’ve read the rules seem to be quite opaque and somewhat subjective to whims of the enforcers.

China is not a Western country so the concept of individual liberties and having the individual as the most important unit in society, as a concept, is pretty much foreign (literally!) to them. You will find very similar trends across Asia. Japan is an interesting case where the current constitution was written by Americans after WWII superimposed on a culture that's quite different in the first place. This is for si…

What’s interesting is that Taiwan derives some of its routes from the same Chinese culture, yet independently came up with support for human rights and democracy. So did South Korea.

Re: For now at least, China's citizens are embracing social-credit systems

#36

Post by thrwy_01 »

est wrote: post #22
thrwy_01 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We hear a lot about Chinese cheating, from sat scores to ip theft. I've long wondered - why is cheating endemic in China whereas you don't hear the same complaints about people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore; places with large ethnic Chinese populations which should be very similar culturally to mainland China. It seems implausible that the value systems in these places would have so widely diverged in a relatively…

> why is cheating endemic in China whereas you don't hear the same complaints about people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore; Because cheating is a cultural rather than ethnical thing. There are ethnical Chinese people in those regions you listed, but sure mainland China sailed a totally different cultural course over the last 70 years. In mainland china, cheating mostly happen because of over competition. If you don't…

Isnt there a similar level of competition in all of those places?

Also I've met a lot of mainland Chinese people who recently immigrated to the us and can say that they don't seem like unscrupulous people at a significantly greater rate than the general population.

Re: For now at least, China's citizens are embracing social-credit systems

#37

Post by coldtea »

thrwy_01 wrote: post #9
est wrote: post #5

Because in really many chinese people cheat. And cheaters are so rampant that people would rather ask Big Brother to step up. China started this national wide 诚信 campaign in 2001, during which time the Chinese society is utter chaos and China promptly joined the WTO. China entered its economic boom, but the ultimate outcome is the social credit system. Highly recommended CCC talk here https://news.ycombinator.com/ite…

We hear a lot about Chinese cheating, from sat scores to ip theft. I've long wondered - why is cheating endemic in China whereas you don't hear the same complaints about people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore; places with large ethnic Chinese populations which should be very similar culturally to mainland China. It seems implausible that the value systems in these places would have so widely diverged in a relatively…

>We hear a lot about Chinese cheating, from sat scores to ip theft. I've long wondered - why is cheating endemic in China whereas you don't hear the same complaints about people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore; places with large ethnic Chinese populations which should be very similar culturally to mainland China

You use to hear it all the time about people in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and Singapore too. Back in the day (for Singapore that's as close as the 70s), they were seedy ports, with anything goes rules, prostitution, gambling, counterfeiting, drugs, and so on. Look for old books on those places.

Those things gradually changed as those 3 places became richer and more important for trade (and Taiwan was an early "China", getting outsourced industrial production from the West).

Note that all three places are much smaller than China, don't have 600+ strong rural population still struggling to get by/to middle class by any means, and some of them had a "Delaware/Switzerland" role in the region, with multiple interests vested in that working well (which is how the law sausage gets made to benefit corporations, the rule of law is held, and the countries get "high marks" for "economic freedom": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_economic_... ).

Re: For now at least, China's citizens are embracing social-credit systems

#38

Post by vbtemp »

lnsru wrote: post #31
vbtemp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This soft bigotry against Chinese culture is really tiring already. Chinese culture and people are all over the world: America, southeast Asia, singapore, and so many other places... To think that cheating and IP theft and scams is somehow part of Chinese culture or that these are virtues unqiue to these exotic orientals and we should drop our Western preconceptions is so unbelievably condescending... And how offensi…

I would say, IP theft and cheating is a communist thing. I was born in Soviet Union. Since the ruling class were the simple workers and not engineers there is no motivation for these to do world class things. The don’t get fame, credits and wealth. So the government must get all advanced technology by stealing. I case of Eastern Germany everything was copied from the West: stolen,reverse engineered and released as do…

Exactly, that's why Chinese culture in places like US, Canada, Singapore, Taiwan,HK, etc etc is generally associated with upper middle class professionalism and honorable success. It was decades communism and the associated violence and very intentional destruction of interpersonal trust that breeds a lot of what we see in mainland China today.

Re: For now at least, China's citizens are embracing social-credit systems

#39

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

nerbert wrote: post #14
onion2k wrote: post #7

As the article itself points out, the Chinese media is full of stories about Chinese people being targets of scams by food producers, eCommerce companies selling fakes, and scams by one another (dating scams and so on). These social-credit surveillance programs have been marketed to the people they're aimed at as a benefit that protects them from potential crime. It's the same everywhere - here in the UK we have the…

In normal countries you have a strong civil society & consumer associations that have the teeth to bite these scammers.

Where are these "normal" countries? The kind of scams GP mentions are rife here in the UK and from what I hear the story is the same pretty much everywhere.

Re: For now at least, China's citizens are embracing social-credit systems

#40

Post by est »

entity345 wrote: post #29
thrwy_01 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We hear a lot about Chinese cheating, from sat scores to ip theft. I've long wondered - why is cheating endemic in China whereas you don't hear the same complaints about people in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore; places with large ethnic Chinese populations which should be very similar culturally to mainland China. It seems implausible that the value systems in these places would have so widely diverged in a relatively…

First, this is a sweeping, borderline racist, statement to state that "Chinese cheat". China is no more into IP theft or cheating than others. I think people should really be careful and refrain from "drinking the kool-aid" handed to them by some media. Now, Taiwan and Hongkong are China. But China that continued on more traditional values. The communist regime has worked hard to change the fabric of society (like it…

You don't seem to understand, social credit is the direct outcome of "legal and regulatory environment".
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