"In that sense, perhaps the most shocking element of the story is not the Chinese government’s agenda, but how similar it is to the path technology is taking elsewhere."
This is because, for example, surveillance of social media posts have been an input to credit scores in countries like the United States for some time. (https://www.thenation.com/article/how-companies-turn-your-fa...)
In the United States, further, social media post and social relationship information is used across America to calculate real time police "threat scores", predictive crime measurements that are applied to prioritize law enforcement and surveillance efforts. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/the-new-w...
China unfortunately is not unique in this landscape of social gamification - the kind espoused by the Bush and Obama Administrations - perhaps most perfectly represented by the legal justifications and arguments by Washington insiders in the intellectual orbit of Cass Sunstein.