The bizarre Social system of communist China! Public trapped in government’s talons.

China is a unique country that has been the most populated planel for millennia. With ethnic Chinese residing in other nations, it is estimated that around one in every five individuals on the plane is Chinese. China’s population in 2020 was recorded to be 1.44 billion people. It was recently announced that India, which had a population of 1.38 billion people in 2020, will probably be the most populous country on the planet.

Let’s have a brief comparison of the two most populous states. Both states have governments in contrast to each other. India is recognised as a democratic state and China holds to communism. China’s official religion is Atheism and India’s population belongs to one religion or the other (with majority of Hindus, large minorities of Muslim and Sikhs and others). Chinese State is considered as the Revisionist power in world politics and they are trying hard to foster an image of calm and order. Soft power is extremely important for any state, so is the case for China. India as a comparison seems noisy and chaotic to the world outside.

To maintain its image as a peaceful and stable state China has embarked on a radical system of governmental control. In China today, the power of mass surveillance and Communist rules have combined to form a strong system of social credit and control. This type of totalitarian system was unimaginable in reality, before this century such system could only be found in novels. In past the Soviet Union, Nazi’s Germany and China controlled their population without any Technological advancement. But now, the Chinese government has authority and power to investigate and access the contents of public cell phones at any time. This means they can look into social media account details, bank accounts, contacts, camera, messaging and everything that one keeps in his/her smartphone. So the government monitors and controls what their is upto, what’s in people’s pocket and on their minds.

The “social credit system” which is still being implemented in many remote parts of communist China, is spread like a web throughout the Country. This system closely monitors whatever the public (i.e every individual) does and gives ratings. These ratings are like scores. One individual has good score the other may have bad scores. And all of the merit of good and bad scoring is determined by the state. The government has defined itself the rights and wrongs, so the scoring goes according to every persons actions and deeds. If a person does something that is considered good such as supporting government, reporting any suspension, serving army etc the score increases and if any act is against government, or even if one parent goes to jail for being against the state, the children’s score decreases fearing what the parents might have taught children. And this does not end here, people associated with low scoring get effected socially the government even slows down the internet of people having low scores. Then claiming a classless society is simply wrong, opportunities for better schools and other social freedoms are hampered to large extend based on scoring.

China however has most surveillance cameras in its cities compared to rest of the world.London also has most cameras but the difference is that where in both states the cameras monitor and stop terrorism and crimes, In China however the cameras keep an eye on any anti governmental move or act. Moreover China has the most advanced facial recognition software in the for world.For example if one is loitering with a friend in the corner for long the cameras capture this and through facial recognition the government finds out that one of them (suppose it to be the friend) was once involved in a burglary, thus the score of first person would also decline associating him with a criminal and he might not even know.

The social credit system was started officially in 2020, due to covid pandemic and economic slowdown in between the plan is yet to attain full efficiency and more implementation soon. The Premier has become increasingly totalitarian and seems to control each and every move of public just to sustain their governance.

For the people who are officials and in top rank positions of the communist party the monitoring and surveillance is even stricter. With the use of artificial intelligence a new system is reported to be introduced which can easily capture smallest of details of human body in order to detect lies. The government has set a program in which officials will be asked questions about the leader and shown some pictures to inquire twice a year and the high Technological setups will easily detect the truth to near accuracy. The technology can detect brief micro expressions, muscle movement and all facial expressions. So the government completely haves everyone in their talons! And this is China today!

To add on the social credit system also exists in USA , UK and Germany but it’s not formal there. In these States the system is not rum through government and is not under any single plan or formalized.