For reporting on corruption among government officials, Hu was arrested, accused of “fabricating and spreading rumours,” and fined.
But then one day in 2017 he suddenly found that he was unable to buy a plane ticket. The system just rejected him. He also found he couldn’t purchase certain train tickets.
Then he discovered that he was unable to acquire a loan from any bank, and even forbidden from buying property at all.
Eventually Liu Hu discovered his name on a government “List of Dishonest Persons Subject to Enforcement.” And there was no obvious way to appeal the designation, or have his name removed from the list.
Hu was one of the early victims of the Chinese social credit system which blacklists citizens who are found to be untrustworthy— in the sole discretion of the Chinese government.
Others on the list have been prevented from renting certain apartments, holding particular jobs. They’ve even, had their bank accounts frozen.
Sometimes, all it took to become blacklisted was an accusation from a disgruntled business partner, or a social media post critical of the government.
It’s almost like an official version of the Twitter mob’s habit of “canceling” people for wrong-think.
The Twitter mob may be easy enough to ignore for most of us. But now it’s become more mainstream to purge US residents who have bad social credit.
For example, PayPal has announced an inquisition in partnership with the Anti-Defamation League to research funding for extremism on its payment platform....<<<Read more...>>>....
