China to create social trust ranking for citizens by 2020

Outlined for the first time in 2014, when the document “Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System“, the system for building a social reliability ranking by China is still in the implementation phase and should become mandatory in 2020.

The idea is to have a big data system which, based on information collected on the network about citizens, gives an note that classifies people. 

The plan reverberates along the bookshelves where the best dystopian classics like “1984"and "Admirable new world” keep good samples of what a society could be like with this system of rating social.

Another preview was also given by the series Black Mirror. Surely fans remember one episode in particular: nosedive. In the narrative, the protagonist Lacie Pound (Bryce Dallas Howard) enters a spiral of anxiety and social pressure due to her 'rating' that makes her incur in the most diverse situations of paranoia, until she ends up behind bars.

In the episode, the relationships with current society are subtle and explicit at the same time. Fundamentally, the episode brings to light the possibility of an “Orwellian” world. If at times Black Mirror seems like fiction, at others, the flirtation with current reality is direct, and a clear example is the China's Social Credit System in question, planned for 2020.

Sesame Credit – China's Personal Credit System

Ahead of the official adoption in 2020, the Chinese government is following the observe, test and learn strategy. At the moment, eight Chinese companies have systems and algorithms that rate people on their 'social credit'. As might be expected, two giants of the Chinese technology industry are running the two main systems.

Perhaps the best known, the sesame credit, is under the control of Ant Financial Services Group, an affiliate company of the online sales giant Alibaba. The other main initiative is led by China Rapid Finance, partner of the Chinese social network Tencent and creator of WeChat, messaging app with more than 850 million users.

Sesame Credit, in particular, is also supported by other data platforms, such as Didi Chuxing, which bought Uber's local operation, and Baihe, China's largest online dating service. All these platforms provide data for Sesame to process and assign grades to citizens.

For now, participation in the social credit system is voluntary. But from 2020 it will be mandatory.

How does the social trust ranking system work?

So how are people classified and evaluated? On Sesame Credit, people are ranked according to a grade ranging from 350 to 950 points. The exact way of calculating the grade is not known, as the algorithm is not public. However, Alibaba revealed the top 5 factors evaluated by the system. Are they:

• Financial history (does the citizen pay the bills on time?);
• User's ability to fulfill contractual obligations;
• Personal characteristics;
• Behavior and preferences (perhaps the most controversial of all);
• Interpersonal relationship;

Come to think of it, financial history and contractual obligations are already assessed in data systems in most Western countries. There is no shortage of blacklists of bad debtors, for example. Including the famous credit rating indices of rating agencies (such as Fitch and Mody's), which classify the risk of investing in certain companies and countries.

The key point is in classification of preferences, behavior and personal characteristics. Giving an official rating to these factors touches on a very sensitive point. With this kind of system, trivial things like shopping and eating habits, the time I spend playing video games or at the gym, can be used to classify someone's character.

In short, it is not a system that only classifies behaviors, but, intrinsically, that models and endorses certain behaviors/characteristics to the detriment of others.

A clear example is the analysis of interpersonal relationships. An interesting point of Sesame Credit is that it gives users tips on how to increase their grade, for example, warning about people on social networks whose friendship can cause their grade to be lowered.

Can Orwellian Society Come True?

In a way, the truth is that we already live in a world Orwellian in the sense that the Leviathans of the digital world (Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, etc.) collect and track information systematically and efficiently.

The novelty in the Chinese model is the fact that, for the first time, personal life information will be used to create a note, a single number that stamps reputation and social reliability.

George Orwell didn't mention Big Data and artificial intelligence in '1984', but the classic surveillance and classification model certainly echoes the Chinese social credit system.

The big concern with the Chinese plan is that the classification of citizens becomes a form of ideological uniformity and control tool. After all, since the criteria are set by a select group of bureaucrats from the country's only political party, it is very unlikely that the social reliability ranking will not serve that group's interests. All this without taking into account the possibility of manipulation by the system operators.

Source: Wired

Learn more about China's social credit system:

• China will use personal data to catalog citizens and companies – El pais;
• China's New Social Credit System – The Diplomat;
• China 'social credit': Beijing sets up huge system – BBC;
• China changes tack on 'social credit' scheme plan – Financial Times;
• Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System (2014-2020);
• Read George Orwell;