https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5730910/china-social-credit-rating-blacklists-citizens/
CHINA'S 'social credit' system blacklists "lazy" citizens who get into debt or spend their time playing video games in a creepy initiative that could have come straight out of Black Mirror.
Analysing users' social media habits and online shopping purchases, the nightmarish system also grants real financial credit to citizens whose lifestyles are deemed to be more wholesome.
While the social credit scheme will become mandatory in China in 2020, it is currently being tested in pilot schemes which have been rolled out through private financial companies.
The most high profile of these is Sesame Credit which has been developed by Ant Financial and uses computer algorithms to score people from 350 to 950, reports The Guardian.
Likened to an episode of dystopian horror series Black Mirror, Sesame Credit rates people on factors including “interpersonal relationships” and consumer habits including buying video games.
It appears the authoritarian one-party state believes that someone who plays a PlayStation or an Xbox is an “idle person”, reports the BBC.
Those with a low-rating are “blacklisted” meaning they are unable to book a plane flight, prevented from renting or buying property and are unable to secure a loan or stay in a luxury hotel, reports MarketPlace.org.
One of the largest schemes currently operating is in Shanghai where jaywalking, traffic violations and skipping train fares can get you blacklisted.
But that’s not all. Citizens who do not visit their elderly parents or do not sort out their garbage into the appropriate recycling bins can also be penalised and effectively frozen out by the state.
Businessman Xie Wen spoke with MarketPlace.org after he was blacklisted following a financial dispute in which he never paid a debt to a client who sued his company.
He was then added to the Chinese Supreme Court’s list of “discredited” people.
Wen said: “It hurt my business. My clients didn’t trust me. I didn’t get much work.”
Not only was Wen banned from going on a plane or a high speed train but he was unable to send his child to private school.
The same report published in February this year says that since October 2013 nearly 10 million people have been added to the same list.
As the mandatory 2020 date looms, President Xi Jingping has cemented his grip on power by scrapping the country's two term presidential limit making him the most dominant Chinese leader since the murderous Chairman Mao Zedong.
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