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What if every action that you took in your life was recorded in a score like it was a video game?

Bad actions lowered your score.

While good actions raised your score, your score could easily be looked up by anybody online and depending on how high or low it was, people may think higher or lesser of you.

Your scores value reflects how everybody else in the real world game of life perceives you as either a good or a bad person.

Well, you, in turn, can easily look up anybody else's score to gauge their own trustworthiness right when you meet them.

It might seem like a weird episode of Black Mirror, but at some point later this year in 2020 the largest country in the world is set to roll out a nationwide system very similar to this concept that will affect the daily lives of over 17% of the human population.

And it's called the social credit system.

Once rolled out later this year, it's expected that every one of the 1.4 billion citizens of China will be assigned a social credit score that will increase or decrease depending on actions taken that are considered by the state to be either socially beneficial or socially harmful.

It will draw upon an unprecedented amount of data using an individual's government, financial and criminal records, as well as their online search histories, shopping habits and social media posts.

The purpose of the system is to attempt to better monitor, rate and regulate the financial, social and moral behavior of China's citizens.

In perhaps the most ambitious social experiment undertaken in the 21st century, citizens with higher scores can expect a multitude of social benefits, while citizens with lower scores can expect a multitude of social punishments.

By using a system of rewards and punishments like this, the Chinese government hopes to influence what it considers better social behavior from among its citizens.

But the idea for the social credit system didn't just come out of nowhere.

China essentially began beta testing the system back in 2009 when it began authorizing regional cities across the country to launch their own pilot systems.

Over 42 of these systems are currently in operation across China, but each one is different and unique from every other system, and most don't even use an individual scoring number.

So something you might do that would negatively affect your standing under the Beijing system might have no effect under the different system in Shanghai or vice versa.

The different regional systems in operation today have different criteria for what are considered positive or negative actions and different rewards and punishments.

So it's really difficult to generalize the system as it stands today, and it's difficult to predict predict what the final nationwide system will look like.

The Beijing finally decides upon.

Overall, the central government of China has been analyzing these regional pilots for years now to see what works and what doesn't work for When they launched the nationwide system later, which is tentatively scheduled to be later in 2020 the nationwide system might include everything from all the regional pilots.

It might pick and choose certain parts from different systems, or it might include almost nothing at all from any of them.

We just won't know until China reveals more details later, however, there is plenty of room for some extreme speculation.

So here is a potential preview of everything that might be included from examples across all of China's current regional pilots.

So based on the various systems already in place, activities that could supposedly increase your social credit score once the nationwide system is in place would be things like donating blood, paying your bills on time, donating to charity, signing up for volunteer work or community service, taking care of elderly family members or being a model employee at work along with more, um, weird activities like publicly praising the Chinese government on social media or assisting the government authorities with cracking down on political dissenters or religious dissidents.

But what I find a lot more interesting than the activities that can raise your score, though, are the various fun activities that can lower its under the current regional pilot in the city of Suzu.

Getting caught cheating in online video games will negatively affect your social credit score.

It's also been speculated that playing with the government considers to be an excessive amount of video games will also hurt your score.

So here's a big F toe all the gamers in China.

If that ends up finding its way into the final system, other things that can negatively affect your score that might find their way into the final system include things like participating in anything on this list of groups that China considers a cult on.

Insincere apology in court for a crime committed, spreading false rumors or fake news on the Internet.

Posting anti government messages on social media.

Not visiting your aging parents frequently enough, participating in protests against the Chinese authorities.

Paying your bills late.

Blasting loud music on public transportation.

Which, to be fair, is actually kind of reasonable, but also things like ordering take out without picking it up or scheduling something like a doctor's appointment or a hotel reservation and not showing up along with other things, like not sorting your waste properly or committing traffic violations like Jay walking or running a red lights.

Currently, under the systems in Shanghai and Jinan, a citizen score can be lowered for walking their dog in public without a leash or for not picking up their poop.

If enough of these dog related transgressions take place, the city can legally take your dog away from you and you could get slapped with up to a five year ban on owning any other dogs.

And this leads us into the bizarre world of potential rewards and punishments.

Ah, higher score can potentially lead to some pretty great benefits like priority admissions for universities.

Priority resume viewings by employers, cheaper public transportation, free gym access, shorter wait times and hospitals and government agencies, discounts at hotels and potentially generous tax breaks, among other things.

Punishments, on the other hand for lower scores can include some pretty ridiculous things, like being placed on a flight and high speed train ban.

And potentially, a ban on public transportation in general, which, along with a ban on getting an exit visa, effectively traps the recipient into being a modern day surf, unable to leave their land.

Other punishments include an ineligibility toe hold government jobs, losing access to private schools or universities losing access for Children attending private schools or universities being restricted toe only a low speed Internet connection, a ban on renting hotels and the weirdest of all, potentially becoming the subject of extensive public shaming campaigns.

Lower scores.

Citizens may have their photos and I D numbers placed on big led screens at busy public intersections or displayed on movie screens at theaters before.

The movie plays like a weird kind of ad where you're supposed to laugh at riel people.

But Chinese social media companies are also helping the government out with this.

In the city of Nanning, the social media app Dowie, in basically the Chinese version of Ticktock partnered up with the local courts to broadcast pictures of people with low social credit scores in between videos, while China's biggest dating app called by he has already begun allowing users to publish their social credit scores inside of the APP, which leads to the implication that higher sport people will do better in online dating versus people with lower scores.

China is already preparing a massive investment into nationwide surveillance to help assist the system.

Once it's finally rolled out in 2019 it was estimated that there were already over 200 million CCTV cameras in operation by the Chinese government across the country for surveillance purposes.

But by the end of 2020 that number is expected to skyrocket toe well over 620 million cameras nationwide.

almost enough for one camera for every two people in the country, many of which will be equipped with new facial recognition technology that will potentially be able to catch somebody doing something in public like jaywalking and lowering their social credit score.

And as of June 2019 China has already denied 26.8 million airline tickets and six million high speed rail tickets to individuals in the country who have too low of a standing under the current regional systems.

And it's not just individuals that China is potentially planning on assigning scores to, but entire corporations might get their own individual scores as well.

Corporations in good standing under the system will receive things like tax breaks, while corporations and poor standing will get harsher increased tax rates.

And as the 2020 deadline approaches for the launch of the nationwide system, it continues to remain largely under development.

We know that the system will be in place only in mainland China.

The special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau will be exempt, but other than that will have to wait and see what China announces.

And so far, China has remained silent, but if you're impatient and you want to hear more about what life could really be like under a weird, dystopian future, you should check out George Orwell's 1984.

And like so many other great books, 1984 is available as an audiobook on audible so you can listen to it wherever and whenever.

I find that listening to books helps me fit a lot more in, and it helps things that commuting toe work or cleaning my apartment become a lot more fun.

Listening to Mawr Educational Audio Books is a great New Year's resolution for 2020.

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