China is taking digital control of its people to chilling lengths

By John Naughton

Watching Donald Trump trying to deal with China is like watching a clown dancing in front of an elephant. The US president’s entire approach is transactional – the methodology he employed in his allegedly successful career as a property developer. It’s all sticks and carrots, bluff and counter-bluff, aggressive bluster followed by rapid retreats. Sometimes, it appears to work. For example, the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, clearly leant on Kim Jong-un to force him to agree to a summit meeting with Trump. But then Xi leant on Trump to rescue the Chinese tech company ZTE, brought to its knees by a US ban because it had evaded sanctions on trade with Iran. Trump duly complied and ZTE executives breathed again.

And so it goes on. But behind these scenes a much bigger long‑term game is being played out. If it were a board game, it would be called Hegemony. (drat: a quick search reveals that there are already games on this theme.) Hegemony is an old concept, much beloved of Marxists, coined to describe the (military or cultural) predominance of one country or group over others. From the mid-1940s until 1990, the world was overshadowed by two hegemons – the US and the USSR. After the Soviet Union imploded, the US became the sole global hegemon. But now, with the rise of China, that hegemonic grip seems to be loosening.

The big issue, then, is whether we are witnessing a tectonic shift in geopolitics. My guess is that we are. Trump, who has the attention span of a newt, probably can’t see what’s going on, but the Chinese do – and so too do many parts of the US government, notably those concerned with economic development and national security, and some of the more reflective members of Congress.

What these folks understand is that hegemonic power is largely about industry – and therefore about technology. And the dominant industries of the future will be dominated by information technology rather than by heavy industries such as steel and cars. Which is why there is now so much panic in the US about allegedly wholesale theft of intellectual property by Chinese agencies and the astonishing progress that the country is making in computing and artificial intelligence.

In the old days, western snobbery led to the complacent view that the Chinese could not originate, only copy. One hears this less now, as visitors to China return goggle-eyed at the extent to which its people have integrated digital technology into daily life. One colleague of mine recently returned exasperated because he had been expected to pay for everything there with his phone. Since he possesses only an ancient Nokia handset, he was unable to comply and had been reduced to mendicant status, having to ask his Chinese hosts to pay for everything.

If the future is digital, therefore, a significant minority of China’s 1.4 billion citizens are already there. More significantly, the country’s technocratic rulers have sussed that digital technology is not just good for making economic transactions frictionless, but also for implementing sophisticated systems of social control.

In particular, they are adapting the ubiquitous “reputation rating” system by which online platforms try to get feedback on vendor and customer reliability. The government is beginning to roll out its social credit system, which is designed to “raise the awareness of integrity and the level of trustworthiness in Chinese society”. It will focus on four aspects of behaviour: “honesty in government affairs”, “commercial integrity”, “societal integrity” and “judicial credibility”.

When first conceived in 2007, the intention was to replicate the credit rating systems common in the west for assessing people’s financial creditworthiness. But why, thought the Chinese, stop at finance? Why not use the technology to assess how “good” a citizen one is? Everyone starts off with a baseline allowance of, say, 100 points. You can earn bonus points by doing “good deeds” such as separating and recycling rubbish. On the other hand, behaving in what is regarded (by the state) as antisocial behaviour can lose you points. Examples of deductible behaviour can apparently include: not showing up at a restaurant without cancelling your booking, cheating in online games, leaving false product reviews and even jaywalking. And if your social credit score is too low, you find yourself barred from taking flights or travelling on certain trains.

As a way of using digital technology for social control, this takes some beating. There are already pilot systems in operation. The Chinese plan to have the system fully in place by 2020. By which time it will be ready for export to other countries – who will be queueing up to buy it, because one of the things states do is to buy the current hegemon’s technology. In 2020, though, Donald Trump will still be ranting on about steel dumping and import tariffs. And running for a second term.