Posted on 11/18/2018 12:36:31 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
Other governments are keenly interested in following China’s lead.
I’ve been pondering the excellent 1964 history of the Southern Song Dynasty’s capital of Hangzhou, Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion, 1250-1276 by Jacques Gernet, in light of the Chinese government’s unprecedented “Social Credit Score” system, which I addressed in Kafka’s Nightmare Emerges: China’s “Social Credit Score”.
The scope of this surveillance is so broad and pervasive that it borders on science fiction: a recent Western visitor noted that train passengers hear an automated warning on certain lines, in Mandarin and English, that their compliance with regulations will be observed and may be punished via a poor social score.
In the Song Dynasty, arguably China’s high water mark in many ways (before the Mongol conquest changed China’s trajectory), social control required very little force. The power of social control rested in the cultural hierarchy of Confucian values: one obeyed the family’s patriarch, one’s local rulers and ultimately, the Emperor.
Author Edward Luttwak made the distinction between force and power in his fascinating book The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century CE to the Third: power is persuading people to cooperate, force is making them obey.
Power is people choosing of their own accord to comply, for reasons they find sound and that serves their self-interest; there is little need for the application of force.
Power is highly leveraged; a relatively small police/military and judiciary is all that’s needed. Force, in contrast, doesn’t scale: it’s enormously costly in capital and labor to monitor an entire populace and impose control and obedience.
(Excerpt) Read more at sgtreport.com ...
Yeah, you’re attacking strawman.
You’re simply being a ChiCom apologist and useful idiot.
Key point: I repeat, you’re attacking strawmen. No one says it’s like when Mao was alive.
And I wouldn't say no to another one of your wonderful drawings!
Wow!
I have sent this to my personal email list.
China!
SerpentZA and Laowhy are also not part of the liberal MSM. Although they live in China, seem like they will continue to live in China, are both married to Chinese woman, and generally love China they still have major criticisms. The food is unsafe. There are lots of scams that take advantage of tourists and other Chinese. They are extremely xenophobic. Their construction is shoddy to the point of endangering lives. And these are two guys who like the place.
My friend in China would agree with you.
Guy couldn’t be more of a ChiCom propagandist.
That link was classic Edgar Snow or Shirly MacLaine - but less intelligent.
Vannrox comments don’t even make sense.
The link he references is pure idiocy.
I think the cmilk guy has set things up to get his wife and kids out of the country.
yep
The scope of this surveillance IS broad and pervasive ....I’ve read and watched several videos about this. Without question a police state in every sense of the word..PLUS! Everything they say, do and go....where they eat, what they buy ‘counts’ for or against.
Exactly right!
I believe you.....all I’ve read about this It’s not surprising.
Big data meets Big Brother....it’s a national ‘trust’ score that rates the kind of citizen you are.
It’s not hard to picture, because most of that already happens, thanks to all those data-collecting behemoths like Google, Facebook and Instagram or health-tracking apps such as Fitbit...that constantly monitor and evaluate you.
So a system where all these behaviours are rated as either positive or negative and distilled into a single number, according to rules set by the government isn’t hard to imagine.
Push it a little and you can have a ‘Citizen Score’ and it would tell everyone whether or not you were trustworthy. Plus, your rating would be publicly ranked against that of the entire population and used to determine your eligibility for a mortgage or a job, where your children can go to school - or even just your chances of getting a date! HA!
If you check “Alibaba” admits it judges people by the types of products they buy... “Someone who plays video games for ten hours a day, for example, would be considered an idle person,” ...says Li Yingyun, Sesame’s Technology Director..... “Someone who frequently buys diapers would be considered as probably a parent, who on balance is more likely to have a sense of responsibility.”... So the system not only investigates behaviour - it shapes it.... It “nudges” citizens away from purchases and behaviours the government does not like.
Posting dissenting political opinions or links mentioning Tiananmen Square has never been wise in China.... but now it could directly hurt a citizen’s rating. .... here’s the real kicker:............ a person’s own score will also be affected by what their online friends say and do, beyond their own contact with them. If someone they are connected to online posts a negative comment, their own score will also be dragged down.
That’s why the IMF wants to get rid of cash and have everything digital.
Best quote from the article.
“Far more disturbing, top authorities are systematically undermining the political norms that figures such as Deng Xiaoping built in the early reform period to guard against the governance failures and horrors of the Maoist era. “
I do agree that there is a movement in that direction. I disagree that it will be embraced by Beijing completely. There are other factors that, for the most part, are transparent to Western “experts”.
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