Unique IDs for monitoringĬonstruction of the SCS is already well under way.
“Sesame Credit works closely with the Ministry of Public Security, the Supreme People’s Court, the Ministry of Education and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce to collect data,” an Ant Financial spokesperson said. Of course, that doesn’t mean China’s intent to monitor and score its populace isn’t worrying.Īlibaba’s Sesame Credit and similar systems built by Chinese tech companies certainly match the requirements outlined by the government for SCS, but the link between what the government wants and what these companies are doing is never explicit, Creemers says.Īnd Sesame Credit is open about its links with the Chinese government. “And many times we don’t recognise that we are doing similar things.”įor starters, people in the West are often tracked just as relentlessly, but by corporations seeking profits.
“Pretty much anything China does makes people panicked,” says Creemers. Chen says he is not aware of any part of the system that judges individuals based on the behaviour of their friends.Ĭreemers, who translated publicly released Chinese government documents detailing SCS into English, says the panic around his work is typical of Western media’s coverage of China. “Materials published on social media platforms do not affect our users’ personal Sesame Credit score,” the company said. In a statement sent to New Scientist, Ant Financial refutes some of these claims. Articles repeatedly claim that Sesame Credit would take the behaviour of people’s friends into account when determining their score, and that it would monitor social media activity. Unsurprisingly, Sesame Credit has received some negative press in the Western media. “It aims to collect nearly every aspect about citizens and integrate it into a mega platform, so this information can be shared between public bodies.” The real threat will arise when the government collates myriad other sources, painting a complete picture of its citizens in data, says Chen. Its functionality will be ramped up over the coming years and will presumably be linked with a version of Sesame Credit as the 2020 deadline approaches. Any court judgements and other interactions with the state are listed.
The site uses data from 37 central government departments and is run with help from Baidu, China’s main search engine. The Chinese government already has a website that will allow any citizen to check out another’s credit rating. “Sesame Credit is one piece in the bigger picture,” says Clement Chen, a privacy law specialist at the University of Hong Kong.
#China tracking and scoring citizens license
By 2020 the SCS will take into accounts points on your driver’s license and how you are evaluated in your career as a doctor, lawyer or teacher, says Creemers. Sesame Credit is just one step towards the bigger, all-encompassing national system. A search on Chinese social networks shows individuals boasting about achieving high scores.
A score higher than 650 lets people check out of hotels faster, while more than 700 earns a reduction in paperwork for visas to Singapore. People with a score of 600 or more can rent cars from the Chinese companies and Car Inc, without putting down a deposit. The higher your score, the more opportunities it opens up. Spending more through Alibaba’s payment app, Alipay, or doing financial transactions involving friends through Sesame Credit, can also raise your score. It assigns citizens a score of between 350 and 950 points based on factors such as their financial history. One of the earliest components of the system is called Sesame Credit – a scoring system built and run by Ant Financial, a subsidiary of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.
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