China uses social networks to add a Citizenship Score, much like a U.S. credit score.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/chinas-nightmarish-citizen-scores-are-warning-americans
" Among the things that will hurt a citizen’s score are posting political opinions without prior permission, or posting information that the regime does not like, such as about the Tienanmen Square massacre that the government carried out to hold on to power, or the Shanghai stock market collapse."
what in the hell is this this is bad … really bad think chinese cultural revolution ('66 - '76)
Your score is also networked to your friend’s score. So if your friend posts bad stuff, your score goes down.
you have to admit thats a smart move for the government to secure power (short term)
Well, I’m screwed. This is only the things they’ve reported on so far.
May 13th, 1994: Twice the man didn’t put hand on heart during pledge of allegiance (-10 points)
July 22nd, 1997: While fiddling with the mustard dispenser in the concourse of the Hubert H Humphrey Metrodome, twice the man forgot to take his hat off through the frist several stanzas of the national anthem(-6 points)
August 19, 2000: During his grandparents 50th wedding celebration, an underaged twice the man made several Jack and Cokes with a bottle of whiskey pilfered from the American Legion adjacent to the banquet hall(-12 points)
September 11th, 2001: Unaware of the scope of the tradegy, twice the man was briefly thrilled that classes were cancelled(-22 points)
Multiple Veterans Days and Memorial Days, 1982-today: Twice the man repeatedly complained about “only the shitty” war movies being on TV(-8 points)
meth is bad
The next thing we know, China will try to bribe its citizens to increase that score by making those points exchangeable for China branded accessories like dopp kits and koozies, and by entering the citizens in free iPad raffles for signing up. It is truly a nefarious scheme.
China used to impose a fine on a 2nd child. The lower classes only could afford 1. The rich had 2 or more. I wonder if the 2nd child rule will have negative affects on their score. That would definitely impact population growth.
It’s logical, given their way of doing things, but it’s not enviable, other than other authoritarians who assume that they will be in the leadership.
There is lots to admire about Chinese culture and history. And one can also be impressed by a degree of cleverness and ruthlessness. But the worry about Chinese dominance isn’t really that they will have lots of money and military toys, it’s that the values of the enlightenment will slowly wither away and we will end up with something like THX-1138 in Chinese flavors.
I don’t think it will ever get that far. Just as most people have a breaking point, so do countries. The government only can do so much before 800 million (a significant portion of their nation) revolt at a boiling point. But even that is not going to happen. China can’t just keep doing these random things to its citizens. But overall, I don’t think the fabric of society will get mucked up too badly.
I agree that there’s a good probability of that, but it is very possible to keep the poplation divided against each other, or try to unite them through creation of a foreign bogeyman. Keeping people atomized makes it easier, and the one child policy helps that too. A large number of people don’t have brothers and sisters, which means no aunts and uncles and cousins. Religion is discouraged, political parties (other than the communist apparatus) are illegal. Basically the only thing they have that encourages relationships of respect between peers are sports clubs. This means that cooperation (as opposed to obediance) rarely gets practiced.
Before technology, the big brother was your landowner in China.
The landowners were known to charge high amounts to farmers. This gave them a kind of 2 class system. The landowners treated farmers like nothing. The landowners were corrupt as well … very corrupt. Somehow it morphed into this Communist and Communist/Capitalist country. The roots are still there. Its sad to realize that as a nation, China is really hurting its people. We have learned long ago that the right to free speech is a founding factor in government. China has so much ancient pride, but corrupt ways and over-control on government is just killing the country’s potential. It hurts me to see this as we are in 2015; why are we still repeating these lessons of the past? If you’re a high polititian in the Chinese governement, don’t you think that increasing the morale of the country is positive for the country’s GDP? Don’t you get paid more when things go well? I don’t get what the deal is with the internal climate of that Country. I had to write a lot about this stuff when I proposed a fulbright grant to study US - China relations on Chinese underemployment. US accepted. China - rejected. They think they have it under control. — Many people will say in current society that the reason they keep white is because the farmer who tends out in the sun all day is tan/dark. So a lot of chinese chicks wear SPF all the time to stay white, you’ll see umbrellas from the sun, its a bit wacky. They don’t want the farmer (looked down upon) persona.
On the other hand, Chinese people are happy enough with their 7% economic growth. They don’t care about all this “freedom” stuff for the most part. The fact of the matter is, most Chinese people who have participated in the economic growth have living standards that are wildly better than their parents’. If you’re a 35 year old urban Chinese, you can drive a German car and eat at KFC. You can live in a tall building with air conditioning. Your parents might have been farmers or fishmongers, and your grandparents suffered poverty and famine in the government transition. So you cannot post anti-government stuff on Facebook (oh you have internet too). Who cares - it doesn’t matter in the bigger picture.
China’s growth and future growth is attractive. But is it sustainable?
I don’t see the issue, sounds quite efficient really.
Will they grow at 7% forever? Of course not. But eventually, they might approach US standard of living, and see less generational improvement in living standards like in the West. When that time comes, they will start to think about free speech and all those First World Problem things.
I would be caution against taking any information out of the US, on the topic of CN, seriously. This is basically a propaganda organization spouting nonsense with near zero research…
“I’m starting to hear questions raised (here and here) about the accuracy of the source on which I based this blog post. I did include a passing caution about my lack of direct knowledge of the source’s accuracy , but I wish I had been more explicit in offering that caution given the language and cultural barriers between the United States and China, and the scarcity of reporting on this system by professional journalists with direct knowledge of Chinese society.”
Translate this if you want it to stay posted.
^ I guess he didn’t translate it.
It was Chinese for “help I am held captive and can only communicate through anonymous forum”.