As China’s economy continues to deteriorate, the Chinese Communist Party increasingly relies on controlling the Chinese people.
One of the CCP’s main tools is the social credit system, which assigns social credit scores to individuals through a system that consists of credit monitoring systems in multiple cities and regions. These systems track individual behavior, and algorithms within the system are responsible for determining who is trustworthy and who is not.
In this digital dystopian system, individuals must maintain a qualifying social credit score to lead a normal life in Chinese society. The level of control the CCP exerts over its people is astonishing.
Undoubtedly, communist China is the world’s most digitized authoritarian state, essentially a massive digital prison where surveillance goes beyond just street cameras. Data on various aspects of people’s lives, from mobile communications, consumer records, travel plans to electricity usage data, can all be collected, tracked, and scored. Local police stations and national agencies continuously input this data into massive data systems.
Essentially, the state’s understanding of you is no less than your understanding of yourself. Combining advanced behavioral analysis techniques, the state’s understanding of you may be even deeper than your own, from your online gaming strategies to your body odor, every aspect is under scrutiny.
And it gets even worse. What people type on their keyboards, conversation content, website browsing history, even clothing styles, walking postures, and facial expressions are monitored and assessed to detect potential threats to the nation and the CCP. The consequences are both real and frightening.
The scoring mechanism now has the ability to monitor people’s views and thoughts. For instance, if one reads online content deemed “incorrect” by the authorities, their social credit score will decrease. If the score drops too low, they may be blacklisted and barred from participating in social activities. For example, millions of people are prohibited from purchasing airplane tickets or even train tickets each year – with a cumulative total of 17.5 million instances of flight ticket bans and 5.5 million instances of train ticket bans in just one year.
However, the punishments under the CCP’s social credit system extend beyond travel restrictions, reaching to the deprivation of fundamental rights to social life, such as being unable to access good schools or job opportunities, being barred from obtaining funds for commercial or personal purposes, and even losing the right to own or operate businesses.
Furthermore, there is public humiliation. This means your name and face are posted on billboards or displayed on electronic screens, undermining your dignity, value, and character as a person, for everyone to see and know to avoid contact with you. In reality, the government can push you into poverty and social isolation, making you a pariah among family and friends.
A protest song from the 1960s had lyrics that said, “If you step out of line, they’re gonna come and take you away.” This is alarmingly accurate in today’s China. Saying the wrong thing, writing the wrong words, even reading incorrect content can get you taken away – not just for ordinary people and students, but also for tech giants and financial moguls like Jack Ma and Ren Zhiqiang, who have expressed dissenting views on national policies. No one is above the social credit score, or more precisely, no one can escape the control and punishment of the CCP’s authoritarian rule.
Moreover, some local-level social credit projects require citizens to provide unpaid labor. Participating in community tasks, such as road maintenance and other voluntary services, is often a compulsory requirement to maintain a good social credit score.
This was once known as “slavery.”
If all that surveillance wasn’t enough, even being in your own home doesn’t free you from the CCP’s clutches – through the installation of QR code scanners that assess your behavior daily to assign a social credit score.
How did China, in just 40 years, transition from an agrarian, Marxist state into a global leader in surveillance technology?
The companies making this all a reality are not solely in Beijing; they come from Silicon Valley. Many tech giants have made billions from this, with no negative consequences. They are essentially aiding in the enslavement, persecution, and oppression of hundreds of millions, if not over a billion people.
For instance, IBM’s i2 software, originally designed for law enforcement data analysis, is being used by the CCP police to monitor the entire population, particularly the Uighurs in Xinjiang.
According to a recent Associated Press report, numerous tech giants including Dell, VMware, Oracle, and Microsoft are providing cloud systems, servers, and software to CCP law enforcement agencies and actively cooperating in heavily monitored regions.
Additionally, U.S. chip manufacturers like Nvidia and Intel are aggressively expanding in the Chinese market, providing facial recognition and video analysis software to the CCP, which form the core of the CCP’s surveillance network.
American companies’ cooperation also includes U.S.-manufactured mapping software – an alert system used to create a “digital fence” that notifies authorities when someone steps out of permitted areas.
In sum, American technology enables the CCP to operate the world’s largest and most oppressive prison society.
Chinese companies collaborate with the CCP, using the technology we sell them to monitor their own people, while engaging in espionage activities targeting Americans within U.S. borders.
To whom do American companies owe allegiance? To the United States or to the CCP?
James R. Gorrie is the author of “The China Crisis” (Wiley, 2013) and frequently publishes commentary on his personal blog, TheBananaRepublican.com.