The Truth About China's Social Credit System

Audio editing by Eric Schneider
Motion graphics by Vincent de Langen
Thumbnail by Simon Buckmaster
Writing & Direction by Evan

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Select footage from the AP Archive

[teoengchin]

So you're saying all those times I praised President Xi in front of my made in China coffee machine didnt increase my Social Credit score?

[johnsonwongcs]

Man, as a translator, in particular Chinese-to-English translator, I have translated many such documents, and let me tell you, nothing said in this video are exaggerations. Those documents, especially the government issued ones, are so empty they might as well be made of air...

[zhenzhenzhang]

As a Chinese person, I literally never heard of "social credit" other than on foreign memes. Really great, unbiased, educational video.

[randomfunnystuff]

It's hilarious that when I heard the score range from 350 to 950, the first thing that came to my mind was Alipay's Sesame Credit. It's like a "bank" that was created to determine how much money they can lend you, hence the establishment of a scoring system. It's basically like "upload your property certificate and get +25 points, " "failure to repay on time -10 points, " and you can cancel this credit rating at any time. Almost all internet companies want to lend money to users, so now there are many so-called scoring systems, such as WeChat Credit, Didi Credit, JD Credit... And it's really hilarious how Western media portrays this as the so-called "social credit"

[sable]

US Media: China's credit score will impact people's ability to work, rent, or even live!!!

Meanwhile in 1980's US: Three privately owned corporations: "Hold our beers"

[bigbadlara]

Just absolutely love this. We need to criticize things but only if it's fair criticism.

[Syuvinya]

As a Chinese person, I can confirm that this is an accurate and objective report on the Chinese social credit systems. (Except for the all accounts on all Chinese websites require real-name registration part. All registered games in China require the user to provide their real name and ID card to verify that they are over 18 for unrestricted access, but not all websites. Chinese games don't have a grading system so even something as inoffensive as a match-3 game would be restricted to 18+).

(Btw you can actually use the names and ID cards of the debtors blacklisted by the court to sign up to games. This is some really big brain move from the CCP.)

(This comment has been heavily edited to answer some questions in the replies)

[CryMoarZ]

As a European living in China, this is so true. When I arrived, I didn't dare to cross a red light. After some weeks, you would cross red lights often. And yes, when I would ask Chinese locals about this system, I would first need to explain the whole thing....

[MrHunick]

Thank you for making this video. As a Chinese person living in Europe, sometimes people ask me about this. It is hard to explain, and I don't want to spend a lot time explaining something that I don't even know very well and telling them a lot of what they heard were not factual. Some people get offended when you tell them what they think is true is actually not. I just tell them it is not nationally implemented, and I don't know much about it as I lived did not have it. Still some Europeans question me on the fact whether it is nationally implemented. It gets so annoying.

[zebraimage]

I'm a Chinese citizen living in China and I try to be a fair critic of CCP. There are a lot of people like me here. But bad reportings like this Social Credit bullshit from the west makes it really hard for us to convince our people that we need to be more open and we need freedom of press. it's frustrating. And it's not just western media, it's also their audiences. People in the west love this kind of boogie stories about China. They are automatically less skeptical with their media when it's about China. They don't hold the media accountable when it's about China. It's a vicious circle.

[ArchOfWinter]

The take away from this video isn't about the social credit system, is how skeptical we should be of how government and company are portrayed as by news media and by official statement.
Every major powers (both political and private companies) on the planet thrive off of these inaccurate exaggeration of capabilities. Saying nothing helps builds their own reputation while retorting will make themselves look the the victim of misinformation attacks and bullying. A win win in either case. In the case of social credit, Beijing not saying anything to discredits the exaggeration help reinforce their might and how sophisticated their techs are to the internationally community, but if they retort, they can play victim of how the US is slandering their reputation to appease domestically to further villainize the West.

[noot]

As someone who works in data, I've always been sceptical of this SCS. It's so hard to link data together in a comprehensible, not to mention correct way, I couldn't imagine them being that far ahead than my western country in data infrastructure.

Very nice and comprehensive summary of the "system".

[rosaria]

I've been super skeptical about this system tbh. Too many memes keep making references to this supposed Orwellian system, so I started becoming curious. Glad that this video exists.

[aier]

As a Chinese, never heard about the stoical credit system, but I heard about USA has a credit system with buying house and cars for financial and lease.

[jialaowai]

Great video. So tired of hearing even "China experts" claim that there's a social credit system here, when anyone who's lived here knows it doesn't exist.

[TheDysartes]

I've spoken with family members in China about this and they've said they way the West was presenting it was a load of old rubbish. They said there is a credit scoring system, but when they explained it to it sounded a lot like the credit score system we have in the UK. It's based around borrowing like it is in the west, your score goes up or down based on your ability to pay back borrowing.

The way China works, is that new laws, ideas etc are tested in a few regions to see if they work, if they're a failure then it's abandoned, if there are issues then those issues are addressed. A new law or idea isn't rolled out across the rest of the country until it's deemed workable, if it isn't then it's either abandoned or taken back to the drawing board.

[kangminliu]

when someone told me, a Chinese, that there is something called Social Credit Score in China, i had no idea what he was talking about, and after i told him there is no such thing, he looked me with pity like i was the one brainwashed and he refused to believe me..

[annache]

As an American who is confused on how dysfunctional US politics are, I’m curious if you’d be interested in covering the Political industry theory created by Katherine Gehl and Michael Porter. Since you’ve exposed to so many westerners like myself that China’s political system is more complicated than the sensationalist media would have us think, maybe you could shine a light on American politics particularly the two-party system.

[ambition]

0:00: 📰 The emergence of China's social credit system was exaggerated and distorted by Western media, leading to widespread misconceptions and fears.
3:25: ⚠ The Chinese social credit system is not as Orwellian as portrayed, but it does exist and is part of a broader context of government control.
8:58: 📝 The Chinese government implemented a policy outline called 'social credit' which aimed to encourage spending and promote trust in society.
10:14: 📚 The Chinese government implemented a 'reputation society' to address moral failure and lack of trust, but the implementation was chaotic and impractical.
13:54: 🔍 The concept of social credit in China is often misunderstood and misrepresented by the media.
17:45: 🔍 The complexity of governing a large population and the use of buzzwords in China's social credit system
20:05: 🤔 China's claims about 'big data' and 'machine learning' should be approached with skepticism.
Recap by Tammy AI

[TheAmazingCowpig]

Real informative, good work here. The idea of the "hyper-advanced dystopian social credit system" always seemed a little suspect to me, and there's no doubt in my mind that some governments in this world would love to implement that, but it seems reasonable that any current implementation is marred by general "people are people" and beaucratic incompetence.