China’s Big Brother reboot
The concept of privacy is set to vanish in the country
China could never be accused of being in step with Western trends on big economic and political issues. The country has only recently come to embrace capitalism, albeit with very large Chinese characteristics. And Western-style democracy looks unlikely to ever get much traction in the Middle Kingdom. Mind you, even in the West, “Western-style democracy” is looking as though its best years are behind it.
So it’s no surprise that while citizens across chunks of the world are contemplating the implications of yet another General Data Protection Regulation e-mail notification, China’s social credit plan is taking the country full steam in the other direction.
The EU’S data-regulation plans received an almighty boost from Facebook’s dalliance with Cambridge Analytica, which made clear just how free and easy the social network was with personal information. The EU has now stepped in to protect its citizens from their own willingness to hand over every bit of personal information in exchange for free access to Internet sites. The new law is expected to change the way in which consumer data is protected, not just in Europe but worldwide. Well, almost worldwide.
Over in China, plans are in full swing to ensure the government knows everything about each one of its 1.4bn citizens. With the help of almost 200m surveillance cameras, millions of state-employed Internet watchers and social media platforms such as Tencent’s Wechat and Sina Weibo, China will soon be able to track how “trustworthy” its citizens are. The concept of privacy will cease to exist. For those of an Eu-style sensitivity, it will be more nightmarish than George Orwell’s 1984.
It’s not just about behaviour in public spaces. How citizens behave on the Internet, who they engage with and what sorts of comments they post will all be subject to scrutiny to determine whether or not they are allowed on a train or plane, or to get a job, passport, hospital access or an interest rate discount on their loans.
Already, traffic police in Shenzhen are using software and cameras to identify jaywalkers. They are partnering with Wechat and Sina Weibo so they can text jaywalkers the second they offend. No doubt, the police will soon be able to deduct fines directly from Wechat-accessed bank accounts.
Remarkably, the prospect of this intrusion doesn’t seem to unsettle too many Chinese, who evidently have greater faith in their government than do the citizens of almost any other country. At a panel discussion (on big data and tech privacy) I attended in Beijing recently, the speakers and most of the audience indicated concern about companies abusing their access to personal information. But no-one other than a British journalist thought much about the government’s intrusion into their lives.
Perhaps China’s citizens believe this close monitoring is necessary to provide a sense of stability in a country that always seems uncomfortably close to the edge of chaos. It may also explain why they were happy to grant Xi Jinping, the architect of this regime, president-for-life status.
For those of an Eu-style sensitivity, China’s social credit plan will be more nightmarish than George Orwell’s 1984