Why China’s Social Credit System Should Scare You
“If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.”
As the already-historic protests in Hong Kong continue week after week, with demonstrators enduring daily hardships, threats, and attack by police, the Chinese government in Beijing waits.
It can well afford to wait.
As demonstrators in Hong Kong may be starting to realize, the Chinese government is holding all the cards, all the chips. It has the biggest seat at any table, no matter how many others may sit it. It also has the biggest tanks.
This is in part because of the already iron-fisted authority with which China has learned to bring every aspect of mainland Chinese citizens’ lives under state control. From China’s internet “Great Firewall” to complete state control of all news media, China has its population well in hand.
And the tanks.
Hong Kong is and has always been a strange experiment, a capitalistic sort-of democracy, with a robust economy that has long benefited from the one country, two systems form of government with which the Chinese government has heretofore controlled Hong Kong.
No more.
The people of Hong Kong do not want to be brought under the ultimate authority of the Chinese government. They don’t seem…