Five things that could land you on a social credit blacklist in China
Social credit systems have spread rapidly in China, and the country aims to roll out a national system by the end of 2020
No matter who sets them up, though, social credit schemes are all designed to work roughly the same way: They reward those behaving in ways considered beneficial to society and punish those who fail to obey rules and regulations. To date, tens of millions of people have already been restricted from buying plane and high-speed rail tickets as a result of being “discredited” individuals.
There isn’t yet a single national system that rates every Chinese citizen with a score, but the government says a national social credit system will roll out in 2020. The closest thing to a national system China has today is the Supreme Court’s list of “discredited” people, complete with people’s names and partial national ID numbers. The list is public, too, free for anyone to browse through online.
But what sorts of things can land someone on a list like this and result in punishment? Here are five things that could get someone punished under China’s social credit systems.
Hitting a student
In May, a high school teacher was suspended by her school for a month after she hit two students with a textbook for skipping classes. Two months later, the local education bureau in Wulian, a county in Shandong province that’s roughly 300 miles southeast of Beijing, decided to follow up with heavier punishment.
