The Chinese Communist Party has been constructing a moral ranking system for years that will monitor the behavior of its enormous population — and rank them all based on their "social credit."
The "social credit system," first announced in 2014, is "an important component part of the Socialist market economy system and the social governance system" and aims to reinforce the idea that "keeping trust is glorious and breaking trust is disgraceful,"
according to a 2015 government document.
The rankings are decided by China's economics planning team, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the People's Bank of China, and the Chinese court system, according to the
South China Morning Post.
The system can be used for individual people, but also for companies and government organizations. The private sector, including the burgeoning tech world in China, has their own non-governmental scoring systems that they implement, as
Wired reported.
For example, Sesame Credit, which is owned by
Jack Ma's Ant Group, uses its own unofficial scoring system for its employees, such as studying shopping habits, according to the think tank
Merics.
The program has been piloted for millions across the country in recent years, as
CNBC reported, and was expected to become fully operational and integrated by 2020.
But at the moment the system is piecemeal and voluntary. Since China doesn't have a central social credit system, many local government agencies have been experimenting with what the system could look like.
Right now, China
does not use a central algorithm to measure credit worthiness, according to the MIT Tech Review. It's a fairly low-tech method that has been conducted at times by
"information gathers" who walk around villages and write down its residents' good deeds, says the MIT Tech Review.
But the plan is for the social credit system to eventually be mandatory and unified across the nation, with each person given their own unique code used to measure their social credit score in real-time, per Wired.
In fact, a national social credit system is currently being proposed. The Chinese government's state council released a draft law in mid-November on the Establishment of the Social Credit System, the first time China has tried to put its experiments into a legal framework by defining what China constitutes as 'untrustworthy' behavior,
according to documents seen by the MIT Tech Review.
The draft law was developed to "implement the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping's important instructions on improving the legal system on the credit system,"
the Financial Review reported.
Bad driving and debt could get you downgraded in the social ranking system
Beijing, China. Donat Sorokin\TASS via Getty Images
Like private credit scores, a person's social score can move up and down depending on their behavior.
The exact methodology is a secret — but examples of infractions include bad driving, smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games, and posting fake news online, specifically about terrorist attacks or airport security.
Other potential punishable offenses include spending too long playing video games, wasting money on frivolous purchases, and posting on social media.