China Youth Credit Management (CY Credit) is working with the Communist Youth League Central Committee (CYLCC) and the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) in a leadership group to develop a social credit system for the nation’s youth.
By gathering, sorting and analysing a huge amount of data on everything from someone’s educational background to what is in their online shopping trolley, CY Credit has been able to launch an app that is designed to give college students and fresh graduates a taste of the rewards brought by having a good social record.
Not to be confused with a person’s basic credit history, such as a US FICO score, the app builds a digital footprint of young people’s behaviour and uses that data to incentivise actions considered as positive or socially beneficial. Although similar to how a bank offers higher credit limits with lower interest charges to model customers, social credit is much wider in scope and includes non-financial actions such as antisocial behaviour and volunteering
CY Credit, which is wholly owned by China’s top state-backed chip maker Tsinghua Unigroup, wants to build a big-data credit system that covers all Chinese people aged between 18 and 45 – which is estimated at around 460 million.
Source: SCMP
