CHINA WILL OFFER “PREMIUM” SERVICES TO THE USERS WITH BEST REPUTATION IN SOCIAL MEDIA
Apr 24, 2018 By NetFin
It might seem unreal, but the Chinese government is putting the option on the table to offer a different service to the users that travel in public transportation according to their reputation in China social media and their behavior in public areas and with the fiscal.
“Publishing fake notes, smoking in trains or having pending debts will reduce the social credit of each citizen.”
Starting May 1st, all citizens that are situated in the lowest part of the social credit system established by the government, will not be able to travel by plane or train during one year. The announcement has been made public by the National Commission of Development and Reforms.
But to understand better how this restriction will work we need to explain first what the system of social credit in China is about; something that might seem controversial to many. The plan started when the President Xi Jinping proposed to review the social and financial acting of each citizen to establish a score. The idea was to follow the slogan of the President: “once the trust is lost, always under surveillance”.
The actions that make the scores fluctuate are the criminal acts, the debts not paid, and random elements as with who they have relationship with, what hobbies each citizen has and what type of consumptions he makes.
In China, as we are seeing in more and more countries, the attitude in social media has its echo in the real life. This is why; the social credit established by the Chinese government loses or wins points if the person has shared false information that has to do specially with terrorism. Having caused any type of alterations in flights, smoked in trains or having used expired tickets will also have negative repercussions in the final score of each citizen.
It might sound strange to the rest of the World, but China established a similar system to the social credit some years ago. According to Reuters, at the beginning of 2017 the Popular Supreme Court made public that more than six million Chinese citizens were forbidden to take a flight because they were guilty of some kind of irregularity.