Farhad Manjoo’s recent NYT op-ed put into words a growing sentiment among the Technorati:
Here is a stark truth: We in the West are building a surveillance state no less totalitarian than the one the Chinese state is rigging up.
They are bold words, but not completely out of place given the trajectory of Chinese surveillance. Six years is all that it will take for the Chinese Social Credit System to go from the initial announcement in 2014 to a fully operational system across the entire country in 2020. Big Brother is coming, and he has Chinese characteristics.
While there is a lot to worry about this system, I wonder if we are all missing a key part of this, the macroeconomic and social context. Rightly, the system seems dystopian, but it has its own logic, especially in a country where markets and information aren’t free. Here is my read of it.
The Macroeconomic Context
Before we get into the macroeconomics, it might be helpful to outline what is meant by the social credit system. Importantly, the current system isn’t as centralized as might seem on the outside. Forty-three municipalities are testing out the system, each region has its own criteria, which translates into different system of letters or points, and even different names. In…
