It seems that China is bearing the name of authoritarianism again.
China is launching a comprehensive social credit system which covers almost every area of Chinese society. However, recent moves to establish the system were highly controversial regarding people’s right and the fairness of the system. Let’s see what happened,
Timeline
In June 2014, the state Council launched a five-year plan about credit score system: by 2020, the social credit system is expected to be set up, and relevant laws and regulations to be introduced.
In January 2015, the Central Bank issued a notice requiring eight companies, including Alibaba and Tencent, to prepare for its personal credit scoring business.
This summer, Alibaba’s spinoff Ant Financial launched a personal credit service named Sesame, which was the first personal credit score system. In this system, everybody is measured by a score between 350 and 950 with its criteria in five dimensions: credit history, contractual ability, identity, behavior preference and individual’s social network.
These three events draw a wide range of criticisms from overseas media and scholarship. Their criticisms focus on two aspects: first, the credit score system will be mandatory by 2020, and people on the blacklist will receive punishment such as online activities restricts; second, the calculation and assessment of the system were regarded as a violation of private life. Certain rules were highlighted. For example, buying certain goods such as video games will lower individual scores and social network is a criterion in the system.
Dr. Rogier Creemers’, a China-specialist at Oxford University, comment was widely cited by overseas media. He said: “With the help of the latest internet technologies the government wants to exercise individual surveillance. Government and big internet companies in China can exploit ‘Big Data’ together in a way that is unimaginable in the West.”
There are misunderstandings
Clearly, there are cognitive gaps between above-mentioned understandings of the system and the real system.
First, Alibaba’s sesame is not the “credit score system”. Some media mentioned that the system is run by two companies, Alibaba and Tencent, which have access to a vast amount of data of people‘s online life. However, these two companies are among eight companies which were listed in the Central Bank’s notice. As a result, the current system – or more specifically, a subsystem created by Alibaba – doesn’t represent the whole credit score system which China is building. (Although it may give us some hints. We will come to this point in the third part of this article.)
Second, Alibaba’s Sesame is currently not mandatory, which to some extent creates a “sad phenomenon” referred by foreign media: many Chinese appear to be embracing the score. Many Chinese don’t aware that Sesame is a part of national credit system, and they only notice benefits of the system: those who reach 700, for example, get easy access to a Singapore travel permit, while those who hit 750 get an even more valued visa
Actually, when the Central Bank issued the notice which allows eight private companies to participate in the establishment of Chinese social credit system, despite some concerns about privacy and justice, most Chinese critics acclaimed it as a progress made to improve Chinese social credit system.
Potential abuses
Concerns about Chinese credit score system are not nonsense. Although a bit exaggerated, the scoring system might indeed cause potential abuses.
“Big data” assessment, above all, is a questionable notion. Its assessment is not transparent, thus most of these scores aren’t publicly available. Frank Pasquale, a professor of law at the University of Maryland, pointed out in his article that most people don’t appreciate being scored by strangers, and might protest if they knew these secret evaluations were going on. In the case of Chinese scoring system, its criteria and calculation are also not available.
Alibaba’s Sesame scores seem overused in other areas. According to Reuters, Sesame scores have been used in some dating websites to ensure that people with high credit scores will not date people with lower credit scores.
Sesame is not mandatory at present, but it’s not sure whether it will become mandatory by 2020, considering government’s attitude toward credit score system. If it comes true, maybe only relevant laws and regulations could avoid potential abuses and protect people’s right.