Assessment!

May 25th, 2019| Topic: RaMbLeS | 0

By 2020, all 1.39 billion people in China will be assessed, graded, weighed, and measured, according to “Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System (2014-2020).”

It’s a lifelong points program that assesses individuals and gives them personal ratings. A humongous, all-encompassing evaluation system that will gauge and assess the behavior and reputations of the denizens of China, and rank them all based on their “social credit.”

The exact methodology is a secret, of course, but infractions include bad driving, smoking in non-smoking zones, buying too many video games, posting fake news online, paying bills on time, etc.

Its intention:

To broadly shape a thick atmosphere in the entire society that keeping trust is glorious and breaking trust is disgraceful. … To have a relatively perfect credit service market system, and to give complete rein to mechanisms to encourage keeping trust and punish breaking trust.”

Several million have already been prevented from buying airline tickets for domestic flights. Others have been barred from buying train tickets in business class. Oh, and if you ride trains ticketless, or are caught loitering in front of boarding gates, you’re in bigger trouble.

Here’s an announcement on the Beijing-Shanghai bullet train:

Dear passengers: People who travel without a ticket, or behave disorderly, or smoke in public areas, will be punished according to regulations, and the behavior will be recorded in individual credit information system. To avoid a negative record of personal credit, please follow the relevant regulations.”

And for those who hang around such socially discredited creeps, you might get your own ratings lowered: guilt by association. Pet owners had better watch out, too. If your dog is walked without a leash, you get hammered. Those who lost all their points had their dogs taken away; they were required to pass a test on pet-ownership regulations! On the other hand, if your score is high, you can even get your profile boosted on dating websites! Etc.

Liu Hu, a journalist in China, writes about censorship and government corruption. He, too, has been blacklisted.

There was no file, no police warrant, no official advance notification. They just cut me off from the things I was once entitled to. What’s really scary is there’s nothing you can do about it. You can report to no one. You are stuck in the middle of nowhere.”

This kind of tracking has become easier as more and more aspects of life move online, with apps like WeChat and Alipay becoming key nodes for making and receiving payments, getting and paying loans, and buying tickets and organizing transportation. Accounts are linked to cell phone numbers, and cell phones need government IDs. It’s all one long daisy-chain of data under state control. Add facial recognition to the mix and you have a dystopian reality.

The problem, of course, is whether you can trust the judging authorities, who have their own warped agendas and standards, and the accuracy of the data.

One day, there will be another Assessment:

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ,
so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body,
according to what one has done.
2 Corinthians 5:10

But this is conducted by the only One who is absolutely trustworthy: God.

Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne;
Lovingkindness and truth go before You.
Psalm 89:14

Says this loving, righteous, and just Judge:

“Let the one who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me,
that I am the LORD who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth;
for I delight in these things.”
Jeremiah 9:24