China takes regulating its citizens seriously, treating them like children by controlling everything they watch, read, listen to, and wear. Now the communist regime has some new tech that allows them to meddle in how and when folks pay their bills. Their new app, “Deadbeat Debtors Locator,” is just one of the newest additions to the country’s social credit system, punishing anyone who isn’t keeping up.
“It’s a part of our measures to enforce our rulings and create a socially credible environment,” a spokesperson told China Daily.
Boy, oh boy, forget worrying about Big Brother watching everything you do; China’s Big Daddy is far worse. The debtors app is designed to let other citizens find and punish those who haven’t been paying their bills. When anyone who has fallen behind gets within 1,640 feet of anyone using this app, it alerts the user. The app reveals the full name of the individual as well as other personal information so that helpful citizens can turn them in to the proper authorities. The Chinese social media platform WeChat keeps a handy up-to-date list of all offenders as well, which about one billion people use already.
So what happens if you’re a debtor in China and get caught by the app? Well, for one thing, you can get banned from riding trains and planes. According to the Global Times:
“More than 6,000 Chinese who have credit problems were banned from taking domestic trains or planes since the first government blacklist was released in June 2018… Among those, 5,028 people were banned from taking planes.”
China’s social credit system isn’t new, it’s been in the works since 2011, but the new programs being implemented are becoming more and more intrusive. As Liberty Nation’s Omar Am pointed out, “According to Global Times, more than 11 million flights and 4 million train trips have been blocked by the social credit system as of April 2018, and this is only the beginning.”
Dong Zheng, an industry analyst in Beijing, said that, “Restraining them from taking trains and planes is just a start, and tougher measures that will have more impact on daily life, such as employment and higher education, should follow.”
The first government blacklist was published on June 1, 2018, and included the names of 169 people banned from taking trains or planes. One of those offenders was Jia Yueting, founder of famed technology company LeEco.
The riding restriction is valid for one year for planes and 180 days for trains, after which people can apply to have their names removed from the ban list.
“This app is totalitarianism at work,” Gordon G. Chang, author of The Coming Collapse of China, told Fox News. “The communist party is seeking to control all behavior with its nationwide social credit system, and this app is an outgrowth of that horrendous effort.”
As the social credit system grows, more restrictions and punishments will be put into place. Imagine being behind on bills due to an illness, loss of job, or some other unavoidable event, and then being outed by an app with your personal information blasted across a social media platform that a billion-plus people use. You are banned from taking a train to work to try and earn money to pay off your debts, and with the traffic and congestion in China, mass transit is nearly a must for commuting. You are denied a loan to try and consolidate your bills to a more affordable payment. And then, perhaps, you lose your job because you’ve been branded a deadbeat debtor.
How long before the medieval debtor’s prison is reinstated?
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