Westerners like to imagine they control people by not letting them travel after they misunderstood the unbelievably mundane “social credit” system that railroads weren’t letting fare evaders buy new tickets until they had paid the fine the previous infractions.
I think they also use it to incentivise giving blood, taking care of elderly relatives as well as a form of punishment for fraud, crypto bullshit and things like that
another aspect of western misunderstanding was imagining multiple distinct systems as comprising a single totalitarian “social credit score”. China has systems that work like normal credit scores and track fraud in business. The stuff about losing your travel privileges was all just about offenses directly against the railroads like smoking in non-smoking sections and fare evasion.
