Thanks Greg --very useful materials. Also informative re China is the recent S and S article by Marcella Siqueira Cassiano:

"The Reform of China's Household Registration System Authoritarianism With Liberal Characteristics" https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/view/6639





Black Mirror analogies to China's Social Credit System case make clear the need to appreciate historicism, even in an age of enduring, and to a degree universal,  forms of control, and human and natural world connections amidst constant change and ever more powerful globalization. We are forever suspended between the invisible, taken for granted, concrete strictures and structures of our own place, time, experience, language, identities and chauvinism and general trends, universals and our imaginative and empathetic potentials that offer hope of understanding other's and other realities.  Caution, humility and appreciation of culture relativity are vital tools for cross cultural understanding, even as distance from what we study can offer fresh insights denied local specialists.  Gary



www.garymarx.net



-----Original Message-----

From: Greg Walton [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 

Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2018 12:08 AM

To: Gary T Marx <[log in to unmask]>

Cc: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Re: the black mirror dramas as non-fiction!



Thanks for posting these links, Gary.



Scholar's who track China's laws are unhappy with mainstream media's characterisation of SCS as akin to a Black Mirror episode. For example, Jeremy Daum:



China through a glass, darkly

WHAT FOREIGN MEDIA MISSES IN CHINA'S SOCIAL CREDIT https://www.chinalawtranslate.com/seeing-chinese-social-credit-through-a-glass-darkly/?lang=en



or, Rogier Creemers:



@ChinaMedia1: China's Social Credit System is a big thing, and most - if not all - mainstream reporting on it contains major factual mistakes. I spent a bit of time and 15000 words to review how it developed.



-> see his paper published a few days ago:



China's Social Credit System: An Evolving Practice of Control Leiden University - Van Vollenhoven Institute Date Written: May 9, 2018



Abstract



The Social Credit System (SCS) is perhaps the most prominent manifestation of the Chinese government's intention to reinforce legal, regulatory and policy processes through the application of information technology. Yet its organizational specifics have not yet received academic scrutiny. This paper will identify the objectives, perspectives and mechanisms through which the Chinese government has sought to realise its vision of "social credit". Reviewing the system's historical evolution, institutional structure, central and local implementation, and relationship with the private sector, this paper concludes that it is perhaps more accurate to conceive of the SCS as an ecosystem of initiatives broadly sharing a similar underlying logic, than a fully unified and integrated machine for social control. It also finds that, intentions with regards to big data and artificial intelligence notwithstanding, the SCS remains a relatively crude tool. This may change in the future, and this paper suggests the dimensions to be studied in order to assess this evolution.



Suggested Citation:



Creemers, Rogier, China's Social Credit System: An Evolving Practice of Control (May 9, 2018). Available at SSRN:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3175792



At the same time, western commentators like Rachel Botsman ("Who can you trust?') are conflicted about the system(s):





"The big picture:



This particular chapter, it was one of the hardest pieces of the book to get right, because it's really easy to take a Western lens. It's really easy to point our finger at China without stopping and actually saying, "well how far is this culture of surveillance from the West?"

It sounds like completely nightmarish territory that the West would never descend into, in terms of using these trust algorithms that are unfairly reductive about people. But then when you really look into the amount of data that companies are collecting, and how they're using that data to get a complete picture of how we behave, where we are at any given time, what our political views are — we're not that far off. It's just the government doesn't own that data. And this is another point you hear from Chinese people — that it isn't so far off in the West, it's just that you have no control, because it's a black box system. There's a part of me that accepts that this notion of privacy is dead. And this idea that we're in control of the data that we post online and where that goes — I just think that's an ignorant position to take." [ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/11/10/whats-your-citizen-trust-score-china-moves-rate-its-1-3-billion-citizens/851365001/

] You can read an excerpt from Botsman’s book here:

http://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-credit-score-privacy-invasion





All the best,



Greg

https://twitter.com/search?q=meta_lab%20social%20credit&src=typd

https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/gregory-walton/



On 12 May 2018 at 23:46, Gary T Marx <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Coming from China, like tangerines and gun powder (with a little help 

> from the companies we love to hate),  to a neighborhood near you?

>

>

>

> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinas-social-credit-system-keeps-a-criti

> cal-eye-on-everyday-behavior-even-jaywalking-2018-04-24/

>

>

>

> http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/03/life-inside-chinas-social-credit-l

> aboratory/

>

>

>

> www.garymarx.net

>

>

>

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