%20(2).png)
By 2020, every person in China will be ranked by the government’s new credit rating scheme. This is nothing controversial, you may be thinking. But add into the mix the fact that every citizen and Chinese organisation will be scored on their political loyalty and social trustworthiness, and therein lies the problem.
The scheme, ‘Sesame Credit’, is being rolled out by an affiliate of the Chinese tech giant Alibaba, known as Ant Financial. Currently, Alibaba’s 400 million users across China can opt-in to the social credit rating system, but in a few years’ time, it won’t be voluntary.
Sesame Credit works by collecting data on individuals including traffic violations, social media activity and consumption habits, and judging this to determine the trustworthiness of an individual. For example, those who buy video games will be downgraded for being lazy, whilst those who buy baby products will see their rating rise as they are deemed responsible.
The consequences of a poor rating will be costly for individuals. They may be denied job offers or promotions, they will have difficulty obtaining credit, and they may be excluded from services such as high-speed internet. On the other hand, those with high scores will see purchase deposits waived, be subject to fewer airport security checks and have their loan applications expedited. People who network with individuals with poor ratings will see their own decrease as a result.
Western media outlets and human rights organisations alike have condemned the scheme for its mass surveillance tendencies. Some have even termed it ‘Orwellian’, in reference to the dystopian surveillance state in George Orwell’s novel 1984. Sesame Credit is viewed as a mechanism of control for the Chinese authorities to use in engineering complicity from the population. Certainly, its assault on several core human rights is evident.
Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) states that everyone has the right to freely determine their political status. Since the scheme will reward those who are loyal to the party and punish those who are not, the choice of political status is arguably taken away.
The freedom of association with others (Article 22 of the ICCPR) may also be curtailed by the scheme. Citizens will have to think twice about who they network with and what the implications for their credit score will be. In this respect, the choice of whom to associate with is removed.
Unsurprisingly, China has defended the scheme, praising it for the void of social trust it will fill in China’s modern society. In the cosmopolitan cities, people with high scores proudly display them on their phones, social media pages and dating profiles. But what of China’s rural, cash-based communities? The country is home to 12% of the world’s unbanked population – people that don’t have a bank account or access to a financial institution via a mobile phone or any other device.[1] It is not clear how their ratings will be assessed, or whether their rural lifestyles will unavoidably result in poor ratings, leading to discrimination when they try to access services.
Unanswered questions remain and it is unlikely to be clear exactly how the scheme will operate until it is rolled out across China in 2020. But the assault on freedoms that Sesame Credit represents is alarming. It signifies a step in the wrong direction in terms of respect for human rights, not only in China, but in other authoritarian countries where Chinese influence is strong. For those of us involved in human rights work, in whatever form, Sesame Credit presents cause for concern.
[1] Camilla Hodgson, ‘The World’s 2 Billion Unbanked, in 6 Charts’ (Business Insider UK, 30 August 2017) <http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-unbanked-population-in-6-charts-2017-8> accessed 21 November 2017