23 Dec 2015

Sesame Credit - China 'social credit'

From Nine To Noon, 9:34 am on 23 December 2015

In most countries, the existence of a credit system isn't controversial. Past financial information is used to predict whether individuals will pay their mortgages or credit card bill in the future. But China is taking the whole concept a few steps further. The Chinese government is building an omnipotent "social credit" system that is meant to rate each citizen's trustworthiness. By 2020, everyone in China will be enrolled in a vast national database that compiles fiscal and government information, including minor traffic violations, and distils it into a single number ranking each citizen. Journalist Jiayang Fan has written about Sesame Credit for the New Yorker