China’s experiment in ranking and monitoring citizens has started

[dqpb]

I understand the inclination to do this - I think it's natural to want to live in a meritocracy. But I just can't image this not backfiring.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

[hliyan]

Perhaps that is a good thing. There is no argument more convincing than a demonstration. So I'd rather observe this scheme's first failure in China than elsewhere. The rest of the world can learn a lasting lesson in what not to do.

And if it succeeds, then I'd be glad to be wrong.

[kome]

Funny trivia: the word "meritocracy" is the invention of a British sociologist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Young,_Baron_Young_of_...

In his book "The Rise of the Meritocracy" (1958) he describes a dystopia where everything in a society is decided by using "merit" (intelligence + effort).

For all of those whom use "meritocracy" with a positive connotation, it should be a compulsory read. It's also short and very fun.

[johnchristopher]

> I think it's natural to want to live in a meritocracy.

That's a bold statement.

Who defines the goals ? The one(s) who can attain them ?

[everdev]

To me, this high level news and the political system in China is terrifying because of the implications that they limit freedom. However, I rarely great about civil unrest in China. Is that because it's hard to get independent journalists to go there? Or, is the economic boom the greater good to most Chinese? Or something else?

[denzil_correa]

> I think it's natural to want to live in a meritocracy

It’s fallacious to think that meritocracy is a function of ONLY the present.

[niccccccccc]

> paved with good intentions.

lol you're giving xi jingping the dictator too much credit. it's a means to monitor and silence his critics, and to prevent protests/uprisings.

this is just cultural revolution 2.0. from hitler 2.0.

[richmarr]

Can you be more specific about these ways you imagine it backfiring?

Brooker tackled this kind of thing in Black Mirror, and while his vision of it was pretty bleak, it actually seemed a lot more open to social mobility than our current system in which inequality is becoming more deeply entrenched.

Presumably there's no way to live off your parents 'social credit' trust fund.

The Black Mirror version of this system would be deeply affected by attractiveness, for example, which would be one possible failing, but there's no indication that the Chinese version is as susceptible to that.

[natch]

They can apply this same system to outsiders too as long as they can buy or gather the data.

They could then use this inside of countries other than China, where they own increasing numbers of business interests including employers.

So this will start affecting behaviors even of non-Chinese people as people anticipate their behavior getting put into the system at some date in the future. Even if the system isn’t in place here yet.

It’s like a preview version of the immortal dictator Elon Musk talks about in the new “Do You Trust This Computer” movie.

[rgbrenner]

Good point. At some point WeChat, Weibo, et al will want to expand outside of China, and they could apply this system to everyone who uses those platforms.

Just imagine, your social media profile on WeChat, your messages on Weibo, your searches on Baidu, your images on Meipai could all feed into your score. Maybe Momo could display and sort dating matches by their score so you don't end up with someone who's undesirable.

Sounds terrible.

[westiseast]

> Yang, who asked that her real name not be used, ... has no privacy-related concerns. “I trust the government,” she says. “Who else can you trust if not them?”

Irony obviously not her strong point.

[seanmcdirmid]

Chinese get irony and are smart about being subversive under cover, this was probably intentional.

[lumberjack]

Sounds like in part, it is trying to replace the lost moral compass of Chinese society. But centralising moral authority was always a bad idea.

[_jal]

Confusing legal enforcement with morality is the root of a lot of the ethical rot we see in many places.

[robotkdick]

I recently re-read 1984 by Orwell and it's frightening how much of the fiction is becoming reality in places like China.

Absolute power lying with one leader interminably has never worked well with results in ranging from subversion of new or different ideas, civil war, assassinations, mass killings, world war...

[dalbasal]

We in "the west" or whatnot need to watch out for the corporate equivalents of this, including credit scores, particularly coming from the financial sectors.

There's just a lot of opportunities these days, with all the data floating around and our increasing ability to calculate probabilities of arbitrary things about people from large enough datasets.

One side of this is disadvantage. Credit scores are an attempt to rank people by probability of default. A modern version of a credit scores would be even more black box. There are serious problems of fairness with this. You can probably calculate some usable credit score based on where you were born and to who.

Another side of such scores is the punitive side. This will affect your credit score, so stay inline. Essentially it's a lightweight proprietary justice system.

Insurance generally works in a similar way. Rental markets can too, and agents will aggregate blacklists which can then be used punitively. Policing is now using a lot more statistical techniques. Employers would probably like a commercial version of the systems police use.

Treating people as statistical objects in this way... Its dehumanising, it's discriminatory and it isn't rule of law.

[crusso]

Is it dehumanizing when I decline a ride with an Uber driver that has 3 stars?

[viraptor]

There's an interesting video from Extra Credits about this. It's based on early announcements and repeats some of the popular points, but it addresses the gamification and social pressure side of the issue which I haven't seen discussed that much elsewhere. I recommend watching: https://youtu.be/lHcTKWiZ8sI

[intopieces]

Any word on weather foreigners will be ranked too? What about Chinese living abroad? I have lots of Chinese coworkers who sometimes get stuck in China when their visas get checked. I wonder if this will cause that to happen more often - I imagine that living abroad isn’t good for your score.

[rdlecler1]

I’m for enlightened meritocracy, but I highly doubt that a centralized government initiative is going to get the score right on a multi-variate analysis (and will probably miss some important variables). This sounds quite chilling. It’ll only be a matter of time before this extends beyond China’s boarders to citizens in other countries. Will China limit your right to travel or do business by putting pressure on smaller governments?

[gumby]

This feels like a modern day version of the PRC system where each residential block had a concierge (spy) who would spy on and denounce residents, and a group discussion session about behavior. Sorry, it’s been so many years that I can’t remember what this was called

[anontoday0406]

Neighborhood Watch?

[pyraz]

I think I saw this Black Mirror episode.

[anontoday0406]

I think I experienced it on HN and Reddit ;)

I would add that the difference is that in Black Mirror, it was other people that are giving you up/down-votes. Here, it's the government.

I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse.

[thiagoharry]

Isn't money a form of ranking in our society in this style?

[Ajedi32]

If money were doled out exclusively by the government, perhaps.

[tambre]

Of course the Citizen's Office for this incredibly modern community still uses Windows XP (and Windows 7).

[spookyuser]

Didn't Xi Jinping watch the Simpsons episode where they installed cameras all over Springfield?

[wynemo]

it's harder and harder to live in china now.

[acct1771]

Please elaborate?

[neeleshs]

Let the games begin!

[niccccccccc]

> The West has social credit scoring: money

??? as opposed to China which has no money??

China's credit system is paired with dictatorship, censorship, disappearance, and killing. Nowhere near the similarities with West

Young Chinese activist missing after sharing plan to wear ‘Xitler’ t-shirt in public

https://www.hongkongfp.com/2016/11/03/young-chinese-activist...

[dang]

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16780676 and marked it off-topic.

[chrischen]

China is not a dictatorship. It is a single party representative government system that does not directly elect as many officials as the US does. However even in the US most officials are not directly elected (including the president) and people are still limited to two parties. Consider the last US election, Donald Trump lost the popular direct election, but was still elected by president by the Electoral college (a separate body chosen by the 2 dominant political parties for electing the president).

Guantanamo bay is not run by the Chinese. While they generally do not imprison US citizens, they definitely do not give a shit about human rights for other people.

[niccccccccc]

There's alot of international people posting on hacker news, and alot of them have anti-US bias. They wish China would be the one that takes over US as the superpower of the world. for those people I have a comment

You like posting political views on the internet right? Imagine China is the sole superpower of the world that defeated the democracies of the world. You would be ranked, censored, monitored, caught, jailed, tortured, and killed.

[songzme]

I might have missed your satire but Chinese people and the Chinese government are two very different concepts. It is wrong to use one too judge the other.