A system called 'The Social Credit Score' is used in China to encourage people to be 'good' citizens
I guess most readers will be familiar with what a credit score is but the social credit score takes this to a whole new level.
Citizens are awarded points based on their behaviour, for example buying health products, doing voluantary work, praising the government on social media or giving money to charity will improve your score.
Playing video games, loud music, missing hospital appointments or jaywalking can lower your score.
Those with a high score are given privileges such as discounts on hotels, employment offers, or priority healthcare.
Those with a bad score can be banned from going to the best universites, or have their travel restricted being unable to buy train or airline tickets.
It is a very effective system of training people to be 'good' and do things which help to perpetuate the regime.
Write good things about the government, you will be rewarded, any dissent is punished. Who decides what is good?
The govenment does! It is quite subtle and the narrative is that this is all for the good of the citizens, though it has the effect of intruding into every aspect of peoples lives.
The media and the regime define what it means to be a good citizen, the media is controlled by the state they are working in tandem to condition their citizens to make them think and act in the way they want them to.
The methods of control may be different than they were in the past but the objective is the same, to keep the communist party in power and the citizens compliant.
In China, Mao Zedong ruled the communist party from 1949 until his death in 1976.
In 1966 Mao sought to strenghen his grip on power and further impose his communist ideology.
During the cultural revolution which lasted 10 years the goal was to preserve chinese communism by getting rid of the elements of capitalism within society.
Mao mobilized the students initially, the 'Red Guards.' He encouraged them to destroy the old ideals, old habits, old culture and old customs.
Party leaders and intellectuals were beaten, publicly humiliated, and murdered.
Mao ordered his security forces not to intervene. There were mass casualties and the country decended into a state of civil war with rival factions fighting for power.
By 1968 things had become out of control and Mao ordered the 'urban youth' to go and work in the countryside and be re-educated. He also sent in the army to restore order and transformed China into military dictatorship.
Millions of people lost there lives during the cultural revolution all in pursuit of imposing his ideology.
In 1976 Mao died and the cultural revolution came to an end. After this a new figure within the chinese communist party gradually rose to power 'Deng Xiaoping.'
Deng started a programme of economic reforms and stabilised the situation in China. He seemed to be popular, though he was still intent on the communist party holding onto power.
This was shown in brutal reality in 1989 in the awful tiananman square massacre. The students had risen up in insurrection demanding democracy.
The army were sent in, civillians were murdered, the attempts to bring about change were quashed.
Since that awful day, China has changed a great deal, they have now embraced capitalism, they have a fast growing ecomony, peoples living standards have been improved, many things are better than they were before.
Though in this digital age the party has found new ways to keep their citizens in order through the social credit score and mass survellance.
This intrusion into peoples lives will get more and more intense with the advances in artificial intelligence, gps tracking and facial recognition cameras for example.
I wonder will the people of china surrender to such a level of intrusion in their lives or rise up and seek change once again?
They know from history what may happen if they do.
For all the advances china has made they are still a one party, authoritarian regime.
The giant portrait of Mao Zedong is on show boldly at the entrance to the forbidden city by Tiananmen Square.
It seems the party will do whatever it takes to remain in power.
Knowing all this I wonder what you think is it best just to be a 'good' citizen and comply?
How can people discern good from bad if they are only allowed to praise the government? Government should impose democracy instead of that social credit score. It's an oppressive intrusion into people's privacy. Having a situation like that is like being a puppet controlled by puppeteers. No wonder many Chinese nationals are migrating around the world. They wanted to escape that unjust government.