China’s plan to organize its society relies on ‘big data’ to rate everyone
China’s plan to organize its society relies on ‘big data’
to rate everyone
By Simon Denyer October 22
BEIJING — Imagine a world where an authoritarian government
monitors everything you do, amasses huge amounts of data on almost every
interaction you make, and awards you a single score that measures how
“trustworthy” you are.
In this world, anything from defaulting on a loan to
criticizing the ruling party, from running a red light to failing to care for
your parents properly, could cause you to lose points.
And in this world, your score becomes the ultimate truth
of who you are — determining whether you can borrow money, get your children
into the best schools or travel abroad; whether you get a room in a fancy
hotel, a seat in a top restaurant — or even just get a date.
This is not the dystopian superstate of Steven
Spielberg’s “Minority Report,” in which all-knowing police stop crime before it
happens. But it could be China by 2020.
It is the scenario contained in China’s ambitious plans
to develop a far-reaching social credit system, a plan that the Communist Party
hopes will build a culture of “sincerity” and a “harmonious socialist society”
where “keeping trust is glorious.”
A high-level policy document released in September listed
the sanctions that could be imposed on any person or company deemed to have
fallen short. The overriding principle: “If trust is broken in one place,
restrictions are imposed everywhere.”
A whole range of privileges would be denied, while people
and companies breaking social trust would also be subject to expanded daily
supervision and random inspections.
The ambition is to collect every scrap of information
available online about China’s companies and citizens in a single place — and
then assign each of them a score based on their political, commercial, social
and legal “credit.”
The government hasn’t announced exactly how the plan will
work — for example, how scores will be compiled and different qualities
weighted against one another. But the idea is that good behavior will be
rewarded and bad behavior punished, with the Communist Party acting as the
ultimate judge.
This is what China calls “Internet Plus,” but critics
call a 21st-century police state.
A version of Big Brother?
Harnessing the power of big data and the ubiquity of
smartphones, e-commerce and social media in a society where 700 million people
live large parts of their lives online, the plan will also vacuum up court,
police, banking, tax and employment records. Doctors, teachers, local
governments and businesses could additionally be scored by citizens for their
professionalism and probity.
“China is moving towards a totalitarian society, where
the government controls and affects individuals’ private lives,” said
Beijing-based novelist and social commentator
Murong Xuecun. “This is like Big Brother, who has all your information
and can harm you in any way he wants.”
At the heart of the social credit system is an attempt to
control China’s vast, anarchic and poorly regulated market economy, to punish
companies selling poisoned food or phony medicine, to expose doctors taking
bribes and uncover con men preying on the vulnerable.
“Fraud has become ever more common in society,” Lian
Weiliang, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, the
country’s main economic planning agency, said in April. “Swindlers have to pay
a price.”
Yet in Communist China, the plans inevitably take on an
authoritarian aspect: This is not just about regulating the economy, but also
about creating a new socialist utopia under the Communist Party’s benevolent
guidance.
“A huge part of Chinese political theater is to claim
that there is an idealized future, a utopia to head towards,” said Rogier
Creemers, a professor of law and governance at Leiden University in the
Netherlands.
“Now after half a century of Leninism, and with
technological developments that allow for the vast collection and processing of
information, there is much less distance between the loftiness of the party’s
ambition and its hypothetical capability of actually doing something,” he said.
But the narrowing of that distance raises expectations,
says Creemers, who adds that the party could be biting off more than it can
chew.
Assigning all of China’s people a social credit rating
that weighs up and scores every aspect of their behavior would not only be a
gigantic technological challenge but also thoroughly subjective — and could be
extremely unpopular.
“From a technological feasibility question to a political
feasibility question, to actually get to a score, to roll this out across a
population of 1.3 billion, that would be a huge challenge,” Creemers said.
A target for hackers
The Communist Party may be obsessed with control, but it
is also sensitive to public opinion, and authorities were forced to backtrack
after a pilot project in southern China in 2010 provoked a backlash.
That project, launched in Jiangsu province’s Suining
County in 2010, gave citizens points for good behavior, up to a maximum of
1,000. But a minor violation of traffic rules would cost someone 20 points, and
running a red light, driving while drunk or paying a bribe would cost 50.
Some of the penalties showed the party’s desire to
regulate its citizens’ private lives — participating in anything deemed to be a
cult or failing to care for elderly relatives incurred a 50-point penalty.
Other penalties reflected the party’s obsession with maintaining public order
and crushing any challenge to its authority — causing a “disturbance” that
blocks party or government offices meant 50 points off; using the Internet to
falsely accuse others resulted in a 100-point deduction. Winning a “national
honor” — such as being classified as a model citizen or worker — added 100
points to someone’s score.
On this basis, citizens were classified into four levels:
Those given an “A” grade qualified for government support when starting a
business and preferential treatment when applying to join the party, government
or army; or applying for a promotion.
People with “D” grades were excluded from official
support or employment.
The project provoked comparisons with the “good citizen
cards” introduced by Japan’s occupying army in China in the 1930s. On social
media, residents protested that this was “society turned upside down,” and it
was citizens who should be grading government officials “and not the other way
around.”
The Suining government later told state media that it had
revised the project, still recording social credit scores but abandoning the
A-to-D classifications. Officials declined to be interviewed for this article.
Despite the outcry in Suining, the central government
seems determined to press ahead with its plans.
Part of the reason is economic. With few people in China
owning credit cards or borrowing money from banks, credit information is
scarce. There is no national equivalent of the FICO score widely used in the
United States to evaluate consumer credit risks.
At the same time, the central government aims to police
the sort of corporate malfeasance that saw tens of thousands of babies
hospitalized after consuming adulterated milk and infant formula in 2008, and
millions of children given compromised vaccines this year.
Yet it is also an attempt to use the data to enforce a
moral authority as designed by the Communist Party.
The Cyberspace Administration of China wants anyone
demonstrating “dishonest” online behavior blacklisted, while a leading academic
has argued that a media blacklist of “irresponsible reporting” would encourage
greater self-discipline and morality in journalism.
Lester Ross, partner-in-charge of the Beijing office of
law firm WilmerHale, says the rules are
designed to stop anyone “stepping out of line” and could intimidate lawyers
seeking to put forward an aggressive defense of their clients. He sees echoes
of the Cultural Revolution, in which Mao Zedong identified “five black
categories” of people considered enemies of the revolution, including
landlords, rich farmers and rightists, who were singled out for struggle
sessions, persecution and re-education.
Under the social credit plan, the punishments are less
severe — prohibitions on riding in “soft sleeper” class on trains or going first
class in planes, for example, or on staying at the finer hotels, traveling
abroad or sending children to the best schools — but nonetheless far-reaching.
Xuecun’s criticism of the government won him millions of
followers on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, until the censors swung into
action. He fears the new social credit plan could bring more problems for those
who dare to speak out.
“My social-media account has been canceled many times, so
the government can say I am a dishonest person,” he said. “Then I can’t go
abroad and can’t take the train.”
Under government-approved pilot projects, eight private
companies have set up credit databases that compile a wide range of online,
financial and legal information.
One of the most popular is Sesame Credit, part of the
giant Alibaba e-commerce company that runs the world’s largest online shopping
platform.
Tens of millions of users with high scores have been able
to rent cars and bicycles without leaving deposits, company officials say, and
can avoid long lines at hospitals by paying fees after leaving with a few taps
on a smartphone.
The Baihe online dating site encourages users to display
their Sesame Credit scores to attract potential partners; 15 percent of its
users do so.
One woman, who works in advertising but declined to be
named to protect her privacy, said she had used Baihe for more than two years.
Looking for people who display good Sesame Credit scores helps her weed out
scammers, she said.
“First I will look at his photo, then I will look at his
profile,” she said. “He has to use real-name authentication. But I will trust
him and talk to him if he has Sesame Credit.”
But it is far from clear that the system will be safe
from scams.
William Glass, a threat intelligence analyst at
cybersecurity expert FireEye, says a centralized system would be both
vulnerable and immensely attractive to hackers.
“There is a big market for this stuff, and as soon as
this system sets up, there is great incentive for cybercriminals and even
state-backed actors to go in, whether to steal information or even to alter
it,” he said. “This system will be the ground truth of who you are. But
considering that all this information is stored digitally, it is certainly not
immutable, and people can potentially go in and change it.”
Jin Xin contributed to this report.
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