Big Brother ranking for all: How would your life rate?

CHINA’S latest scheme to maintain control over its people is terrifying. And there’s a chance it could spread around the world.

IMAGINE a world where you are given a “citizen rating” based on your lifestyle, shopping habits, social behaviour and morals.

China is moving quickly towards just such a system, in a Big Brother-style plan that will see everyone given a grade between 350 and 950.

If you buy nappies or recycle, you get extra points for showing you are responsible. If you play video games and spend too much on clothes, you lose points. Your friends matter, too. If they have a poor financial record, it reflects badly on you.

A low score will have serious consequences, making you ineligible for certain jobs and restricting in borrowing money, claiming benefits or finding housing.

The “social credit” system is an extension of your credit rating at the bank, only it goes far beyond financial status. And it takes in people left out of traditional systems: students, low-income households and those who have never borrowed.

The idea has been developing since 2003, and China’s government hopes it will be able to give a score to every individual, legal entity and organisation in the country by the end of 2017. The rating, issued along with identity cards, will initially be based on business records, tax payments, social security payments and traffic violations.

Experts in China say the system will restore trust in a society where everyone has become strangers.

China’s state news agency Xinhua said people would be assessed in four areas: administrative affairs, commercial activities, social behaviour and the judicial system. Your “credibility” will be constructed through 30 areas in which points can be awarded and taken away, from energy saving to advertising.

Harnessing our data from banks, retailers and social media, it’s the kind of all-encompassing surveillance system that would terrify us in the West. But the Chinese government’s State Council said in a plan released in June 2014 that the system was key to “building a harmonious Socialist society ... strengthening the sincerity consciousness of the members of society, forging a desirable credit environment, raising the overall competitiveness of the country [and] stimulating the development of society and the progress of civilisation.”

By 2020, people with scores above a certain level will receive rewards, such as credit to start a business, while those with lower ratings could face ominous-sounding punishments.

In a translation published by Oxford University researcher Rogier Creemers, the government made a chilling vow to “establish online credit black list systems, list enterprises and individuals engaging in online swindles, rumour-mongering, infringement of other persons’ lawful rights and interests and other grave acts of breaking trust”. Transgressors will face measures such as “limitation of online conduct and barring sectoral access” and being reported to “corresponding departments for publication and exposure.”

People will be given scores based on spending, hobbies and social life.

This year, the central bank gave eight private organisations including e-commerce company the Alibaba Group the green light to start giving people personal ratings, China Daily reported. Alibaba’s Sesame Credit Management scores people based on their hobbies, interaction with friends, spending and lifestyle.

Customers with more than 600 points can take out a “Just Spend” loan of up to 5000 yuan ($1095) on the site and those with more than 666 points can get cash loan of up to 50,000 yuan ($10,950).

China believes the rating system will increase integrity, improve trust and prevent fraud and dishonesty. “This is a deliberate effort by the Chinese government to promote among its citizens ‘socialist core values’ such as patriotism, respecting the elderly, working hard and avoiding extravagant consumption,” Dr Creemers told Dutch newspaperde Volkskrant.

Silicon Valley entrepreneur Michael Fertik called it “the most staggering, publicly announced, scaled use of big data I’ve ever seen” but “a fairly inevitable evolution — an updated, Big Data version — of the longstanding Communist Party’s grading of China’s citizens.”

So could it happen in the West? Well, maybe. The issues that have led to the social rating system’s invention apply just as much here.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said part of the impetus was the fact the nation had moved from a “society of acquaintances” into “a society of strangers”, eroding moral conduct. In a market-based economy where we can assess financial status, Dr Creemers told Fast Company, people began to think “you should equally be able to do that with other modes of trustworthiness”.

We’re already halfway there, with websites where we can rate our teachers and doctors, and online accounts that know our preferences in movies and reading matter. Just this week, there was uproar over the new app Peeple, where users can rate acquaintances in three categories — professional, personal and dating.

Johan Lagerkvist, a Chinese internet specialist at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, told de Volkskrant the social credit system was “Amazon’s consumer tracking with an Orwellian political twist” while Dr Creemers compared it to “Yelp reviews with the nanny state watching over your shoulder”.

There may be positives in improving how we function as citizens and workers, but rating us on every aspect of our lives also removes our sense of individual control.

Sociologist Zhou Keda, from the Guangxi Academy of Social Sciences, told the Beijing Review: “It is easy to build a social credit system, but it takes more time to restore ethical behaviour, improve the market economy system and promote equality.”

Once we lose all autonomy and are constantly monitored, will we still feel like people, or just sheeple?