(NYP) – Imagine calling a friend. Only instead of hearing a ring tone, you hear a police siren, and then a voice intoning, “Be careful in your dealings with this person.” Would that put a damper on your relationship? It’s supposed to. Welcome to life in China’s “Social Credit System,” where a low score can ruin your life in more ways than one. Say you arrive at the Beijing airport, intending to catch a flight to Canton 1,200 miles south. The clerk at the ticket counter turns you away because — you guessed it — your social credit score is too low.
Not only are you publicly humiliated in the ticket line, you are then forced to travel by slow train. What should have been a three-hour flight becomes a 30-hour, stop-and-go nightmare. All because the government has declared you untrustworthy. Perhaps you defaulted on a loan, made the mistake of criticizing some government policy online or just spent too much time playing video games on the internet. All of these actions, and many more can cause your score to plummet, forcing citizens onto the most dreaded rung on China’s deadbeat caste system, the laolai. READ MORE
