China’s social credit system ‘could interfere in other nations’ sovereignty’ | Hacker News Reader

China’s social credit system ‘could interfere in other nations’ sovereignty’

theguardian.com

60 pointsraleighm33 comments

That is pretty horrible that so many companies from outside can be pressured to behave outside of china, like changing how they describe Taiwan. But that's separate from social credit, and that's not new.

Article states that social credit scores are kept for foreign firms:

"[...] the violation was also recorded on the social credit system’s National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System."

So? They can just choose to do business elsewhere. China should completely open up their markets, because they seem to prescribe that to everyone else except themselves. We should follow them in kind.

No they can't. If you're a global company like an airline, you can't just choose to make more profits somewhere else instead of making them in China. Giving up a big chunk of international markets can be the difference between being able to compete with rivals, and not being able to and hence and going bust. Really.

That is how diplomacy works.

Diplomatic negotiations can involve even the most absurd of things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panda_diplomacy

Agreed. The current system is just giving an explicit score to something that was tallied implicitly so far. I feel it repulsive that states would score citizens' social score but I don't mind them doing it for companies.

They're also doing it for news agencies, charities and other NGOs. These organisations including companies are made up of people, and if we care about the free speech of people, we should care about this.

> That is pretty horrible that so many companies from outside can be pressured to behave outside of china, like changing how they describe Taiwan.

Try this on for size then. Cliff notes: school kids have their designs on a fake cow painted over, as not to offend the Chinese beef industry...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-09/childrens-cow-statue-d...

Not the first time either, e.g. lecturers getting in trouble for calling Taiwan a country: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-41104634

This is not likely to change, universities make too much money off foreign students. Australia is maybe in a more precarious position simply because of their geographic location and the resulting trade partners. (That isn't to say Australia is the only place this pressure is felt though.)

I thought Taiwan believed themselves to be China. As the govt. in exile.

> I thought Taiwan believed themselves to be China. As the govt. in exile.

Some of them do, and I believe that's still the official position (so as to not anger the PRC), but they've been politically separate for so long that many Taiwanese believe they are a separate nation and have little desire for future political integration with the mainland [1]. IIRC, the current Taiwanese president is from a pro-independence [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_independence_movement

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsai_Ing-wen#Cross-strait_rela...

> it may have positive benefits for Chinese citizens because government officials can be blacklisted for corrupt behaviour

I understand the Guardian's reporter needs to report what people said, but for the love of god, could they please stop giving support to this absurd notion that "corruption" crackdowns in China have anything to do with corruption? They are almost always about power consolidation.

Couldn't agree more with you. I suspect that their reporters either have a very poor understanding of what a totalitarian state is, or they just couldn't be bothered to visit any place beyond Beijing and Shanghai (which represent < 5% of China) for field studies.

What's really strange are Westerners who unilaterally deem China totalitarian, a sentiment not shared by most Chinese themselves. You wonder if people will ever outgrow the need to invent a boogeyman to legitimize their own dire circumstances. Imagine, victims of one of the most profoundly inequal systems in the world railing against Communism/Socialism/China/that-other-system.

You're right, the sentiment is not shared by most Chinese people. Then again, most of them wouldn't recognize the Tank Man picture. They have no legitimate news journalism. Their version of the internet is profoundly sabotaged. Human rights lawyers are routinely kidnapped and their families placed under indefinite house arrest. When protests happen, they are violently crushed and subject to complete media blackout. If Chinese people were able to express themselves and hear others express themselves, with some semblance of a news media, I think they'd feel quite differently.

Your fantasy version of China bears little relation to reality. In fact there's vibrant discussion online and in person, frequent protests (which actually produce real change because local officials are very sensitive to protests [1]) and plentiful journalism that is far less corporate controlled and far more relevant to the common person. Feel free to hop on a plane and come visit. This "totalitarian state" can be freely visited by most anybody (stop by Hong Kong to pick up a visa).

[1] http://time.com/5323079/china-army-veterans-protests-xi-jinp...

I lived in China for three years. I speak Mandarin. The article you linked is a report in western media. Can you find the same story in Chinese media?

Considering that everybody's talking about it online and GT (Global Times) just published an editorial I don't think it would be too difficult. (BTW, congrats on making it out alive. Millions of people weren't so fortunate and failed to escape from such totalitarian states.)

They're right though, and you must not be pushing any kind of sensitive boundary to think it's not an authoritarian state.

Which town are you from? In the countryside there are hilarious Big Brother style posters on houses promoting civil obedience. People don't think it's strange at all, of course they're not going to recognise the depths of their repression unless they're educated and well traveled.

I went looking for the story on Chinese sites, even though my Chinese is not quite good enough for this to be practical. I couldn't find anything, so I asked one Chinese friend and two acquaintances about it. Two couldn't find anything. The third found some ordinary people talking about it, but no news websites. She told me without irony that "there are a lot of Chinese people. The societal environment is complex. The government will block the passage of information in order to safeguard societal stability and harmony".

If somebody better at Chinese can find anything, I'd appreciate hearing about it. Thanks in advance.

Global Times is like the Chinese version of InfoWars (or worse), which publishes party propaganda and frequently incites chauvinism and hatred towards US, Japan, Australia, Korea, Taiwan, etc. Educated Chinese people usually don't take it as a reliable source of news.

If you have need living in China for 3 years, you are probably aware of how effective is the censorship there.

> This "totalitarian state" can be freely visited by most anybody (stop by Hong Kong to pick up a visa).

Funny. Many Hongkongers (in particular the democrats) have been denied access to not only Chinese mainland, but also Macau. Are Hongkongers not counted as "anybody"? Is this your version of "freedom with Chinese characteristics"?

Here is the system

www.gsxt.gov.cn

Everyone can query for enterprise basic info, executives info, shareholders name, annual reports (if any), and also, as the article says, credit and violations.

You can type "微软" for Microsoft as an example. (there might be a bullshit CAPTICHA where you must drag the tile to the missing place)

btw I hate articles that rambles about "some guy say" instead of some plain, direct hyperlink to the goddamn website. The reader should have basic Internet skills and judgement level.

I can't make sense of the captcha. I get an image with 5 Hanzi embedded, and I'm supposed to click in 5 different places – but clicking on the characters doesn't work.

They had that? damn. I think you were supposed to click the characters in idiomatic order.

Try refresh the page. The one I've encountered were tile dragging ones.

Am i parsing this wrong?

The first headline says: China’s social credit system ‘could interfere in other nations’ sovereignty’

And the second headline says: [China’s social credit system] is shaping behaviour of foreign businesses

So "to interfere in other nations sovereignty" is "to shape behaviour of foreign businesses"? So "other nation" is "foreign business"? So "business" is "nation"?

Affecting how businesses choose to conduct themselves so that they may continue to access the Chinese market? Sure! Impacting the sovereignty of other countries? What a ridiculous statement..

Companies have always catered to the major markets. That's how California fuel standards have become the US benchmark, or why Texas school boards in effect control national teaching materials and school books in the US. Companies also have a history of being used as political tools, willingly or not. The only reason we're suddenly seeing outrage is because the one wielding these tools is China, not the US. That's not to say I support any of the shit China's pulling.. But Australia, Austria or whomever still retain their sovereignty and freedom to set whatever rules they want within their borders. Companies can comply if they wish to do business there.

One might argue that those are progressive benchmarks. A lunatics social credit system is not.

>Critics of China’s social credit system say it is an Orwellian tool of social monitoring and political repression; but the Chinese government says it is a way of boosting administrative efficiency and encouraging trust and moral behaviour by its citizens.

This is so sad. China is such bad shape on matters like trust and moral behavior that the government has to resort to these sorts of extreme measures.

The problem is this will likely just backfire over the long term. The more expression is suppressed, then the less real information about facts and people's views is available to the government, and so the government makes worse and worse decisions. Just watch this happen in the coming years and decades.

This is also likely to impact web-services internationally in cases where you need a license to be viewed from China even if you are hosted internationally. This happens in the case of some content delivery networks and related software that are specifically targeted.Alternatively, they can throttle your access. Add social credit to that and you have a tool that makes GDPR look positively benign.

> This is also likely to impact web-services internationally in cases where you need a license to be viewed from China even if you are hosted internationally.

I'm afraid you are being optimistic. They do things way worse than that. The Great Firewall can block your website for no reason [1]. By 'block' I mean completely blocked, even if you use OpenVPN, GFW can detect its packet and still block it. Back in 2016 there was a time that even GitHub was blocked. And bandwidth throttling has been in place as early as 2014 for websites that are not completely blocked by GFW. Now the so-called "social credit system" is basically the Skynet or Matrix. If the US and other western democracies don't stand up to this kind of lunacy and bullying, then nothing would be able to stop China.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Websites_blocked_in_mainland_C...

Yes, I know. there are ways around it though, even without VPN. What I was referring to was PRC pressuring foreign companies via the internet license mechanism, basically they have used targeted bandwidth throttling of foreign companies/technology that have not purchased PRC internet licenses. If you buy the license they don't throttle you. They have also been centralising internet routing regionally to speed things up. Basically, you have a two-speed internet. It's similar to what would likely happen if net neutrality were scrapped in the US. Social credit could lso be applied globally, even to nation states if they so chose. Couple it to the internet license and they have a powerful too that reaches far beyond their geographical territory.

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