Edit: as far as I know it's NOT mandatory, nor are there plans to make it mandatory. It's really just another tech app with uncomfortable intrusive overtones, you know, like Facebook or Google etc. Given the Chinese government's track record it's very probable this will be added to the surveillance arsenal they've got. See: [www.techinasia.com]

I've been a sort of amateur China-watcher for about 5 to 6 years now, and this video's definitely on the "bash China" end of the spectrum. You send China flying with a powerful bash!

Sesame Credit : China == Mobile Phone Tech : USA.

Sesame Credit is a technological solution to a problem (credit scoring). It isn't meant explicitly for totalitarian surveillance. It is very possible, and indeed probable, that governments will use it for surveillance and control purposes in the future.

Mobile Phone Technology is a technological solution to a problem (computing-on-the-go). It wasn't explicitly made for the NSA's surveillance. However, when the tech became ubiquitous, it became convenient and easy for the NSA to use it to monitor people.

I mean, the Chinese can't get anything right in the eyes of some outside observers: if they make the same-old thing other people have already got, then they're copying monkeys. If they make an exciting new technology, then they're evil overlords intending to use it for evil (think of the news coverage over the quantum satellite they launched, or the giant supercomputers they've been making). As a Russian surely you must be able to sympathize with that predicament :-)

I happen to think that the Chinese as a nation (not as a people, people have different cultures) aren't all that different from other large dominant superpowers. I think there's a tendency for Western observers to play up the Chinese being evil or incompetent or insertNegativeHere depending on their purposes, just like there's a tendency for the Chinese to play up the lower-testosterone-culture or the lack of historical overseas naval conquest of the Chinese as proof that they will be a strictly peaceful superpower.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/31/2017 05:00AM by starbright.