This list of Frequently Asked Questions is a work in progress. Please feel free to ask additional questions in the comments.<br> <br> Is Social Credit real?<br> <br> Yes, There is something in Chinese law called 社会信用 (social credit) that I have spent years researching and writing about.<br> <br> This system is so distinct from the citizen scoring and surveillance system called "Social Credit" in media outside of China, however, that it's almost impossible to discuss the actual system without first addressing the mythos.<br> <br> The typical Media portrayal is captured by the ASPI report on Social Credit which describes it as "the use of big-data collection and analysis to monitor shape and rate behavior via economic and social processes" with "real-time data collection, both inside and outside China's geographical borders.<br> <br> Or more simply, as then U.S. Vice President Mike Pence put it: "an Orwellian system premised on controlling virtually every facet of human life — the so-called “Social Credit Score.”"<br> <br> The high-tech citizen scoring system does not exist.<br> <br> What China calls social credit is both more complicated and much less interesting.<br> <br> China prohibits internet anonymity, has ubiquitous surveillance cameras, and broad censorship and stability controls-- this has little to do with Social Credit.<br> <br> Where did the myth of Social Scoring come from?<br> <br> There's plenty of blame to spread around for the story starting- it's the endurance that is more astounding.<br> <br> Foreign Media: Early on, not long after the release of China's Planning Outline for Social Credit (which does not mention scores of any kind), Dutch media first reported on Social Credit as a citizen rating system. A key problem seemed to be believing that a 'uniform social credit code' 统一社会信用代码 was an assigned rating of some kind, when it actually referred to citizens' ID numbers or an equivalent for corporations.<br> <br> The story was picked up with mild interest, but didn't really gain steam until Rick Falkvinge, a privacy advocate and founder of Sweden's Pirate Party, wrote an incendiary article on the Privacy Online News blog. That article has now been deleted and replaced with a corrective （note the original title in the URL).<br> <br> Falvinge's piece is notable in that it was the first of many stories to use Social Credit primarily as a foil for discussing global privacy concerns. It marks the beginning of the "it could happen here" narrative that was immediately embraced by the ACLU's Jay Stanley in his article "China’s Nightmarish Citizen Scores Are a Warning For Americans".<br> <br> A number of people quickly fact-checked Stanley's article and he added an update conceding that he wasn't able to really assess what was happening in China, but saying that the warning to the US was still relevant. Unfortunately, the update was an insufficient corrective and a cascade of mainstream articles and videos followed.<br> <br> Once Mike Pence and George Soros weighed in, the story was bound to stick.<br> <br> Is Social Credit the Same as US credit scores?<br> <br> China has a financial credit reporting system 征信 that is inspired by the US system. This system is usually listed as part of Social Credit, but is effectively independent from Credit Regulation 信用监管 which is the heart of Social Credit.<br> <br> Financial Credit Reporting purports to measure the likelihood that someone will repay a loan, loan risk.<br> <br> The processes and data used to generate financial credit assessments can vary greatly, and are often proprietary. In the US,  some employers, landlords, and others use credit scores as a more general measure of reliability. In China, financial credit reports have historically not contained a 'score' but were a list of outstanding debts and defaults, recently scores have become available.<br> <br> Chinese Credit Regulation measures legal compliance. It's main principle is that the degree to which regulatory agencies will scrutinize businesses is based on past compliance with laws and regulations.<br> <br> For example, if an import/export company has never had a violation, Customs won't need to open every shipping container they vouch for. If they have been busted for false declarations- they will get searched more frequently and thoroughly.<br> <br> This pattern of regulation exists elsewhere and doesn't have much to do with financial credit reporting.<br> <br> Other parts of the social credit system, like the court judgment defaulter are often problematic, but are based on outstanding court judgments, not a score of any kind.