Background: I’m Chinese by origin but grew up in the west. He’s English. He’s kind of a 
but in a lefty way and has been with me to China multiple times, we’ve been together for years. He has had misconceptions before but is always learning. He does go on Reddit still, mostly to talk about land value tax which is his big political obsession right now.
Anyway last night we were at dinner and talking about an idea for a project that’s like quora but with only expert/academic researchers as responders. Part of it would need a reputation rating for the researchers. We were then talking about the use cases/audience for the project and I said “this might be better suited to Asia” (because of how highly education is valued and the pressure on kids to study/achieve grades). And he immediately responded “because they’re used to social credit scores?” Like. Without missing a beat. Maybe I’m overthinking it but it really pissed me off that his first association when I mentioned Asia was… this.
We talked about it and he explained that the concept was already in his mind when he was thinking about the reputation system so it wasn’t just a reaction to Asia specifically. But he insisted that he knew social credit scores were a real thing. I think he did listen when I said these types of jokes were what made Reddit such a hostile environment to be in, though.
I’m not sure what I’m asking but I just wanted to get it off my chest. Does anyone maybe have resources on internet Sinophobia / explanation of where the social credit stuff came from I can share with him?
Thanks crew. Sorry that was so long x
Hey it sucks that happened to you
I have a podcast episode from a USian academic where he debunks the claim about social credit, he also had another episode on the same podcast about Chinese police stations and how it really isn't anything like what the media reported. He is fluent in Chinese and reads legal documents in their native language and seems to have a decent understanding about the legal system there. He advises government and business folks I think, and his takes are among the best I've seen for a
(though he is critical, he attempts to be fair in his own way).
The host and the guy mentioned in the police station episode, that after he wrote about how social credit wasn't really a thing in China and debunked it, some bigger publications stopped reporting on it, presumably because they knew it was not true (which I think means they thought it was true and they came to that conclusion after doing their due diligence??)
I hope this helps in some way.
Listened to the episode, very good. The way he describes it is that there is a social credit system but there is no scoring involved. What it really is, is a publically available centralization of public records. The example he gives is that if a business has repeated health code violations then other regulators will be aware of that when inspecting that business. That said, he points out that even the chinese use the "social credit score" meme although they understand there isnt an actual number.
In the US we have many public records but they often aren't centralized in any way. A landlord's building code violations are a matter of public record. But they'll be scattered amongst all the local municipalities where the landlord owns properties and probably associated only to the specific property and/or LLC that owns the property. Trying to see just how many building code violations a specific landlord has through all their LLC, properties, and municipalities is a massive task. Any public effort to do it would be met with vast hostility from not just landlords but any bourgeoisie who dont want a central listing of all their violations.
That said, there are private efforts to centralize public records in the US. They're called background checks. Since it takes so much labor to do such a service comes at a price that only the bourgeoisie can afford. Therefore those background check companies only serve to surveil the proletariat. So instead of knowing how many evictions landlord has filed, you learn how many times a tenant has been evicted.
Ah, thanks for the summary, glad you liked it. Some of their content can be uh, yeah for some episodes I had to keep pausing and I would argue with the silence...
From that one episode nothing seemed wrong more like an issue with priorities. Like constantly mentioning Xinjiang, even though their perspective on it was far more mild than the average american. Could be a consequence of public intimidation, could be a lack of a materialist theory. Probably both.
Fair, credit where credit is due.
Ah, the problematic stuff was in another podcast, ChinaTalk. One episode in particular.
Yeah ok this makes more sense, I thought the change in sentiment was weird but it's explained by the fact that there were two separate podcasts.
Oh look its citations needed punching bag