China’s social credit score system exists because after their rapid urbanization the business community started complaining that they needed a way to know who can be trusted to pay back loans. At the same time the cities were full of people who were used to knowing all their neighbors and were now surrounded by strangers that they didn’t trust. The Chinese government framed both of these problems as the same thing - a crisis of trust - and presented the social credit score as the solution. It was just a copy of the United States’ credit score system but dressed up in socialist buzzwords to make it more palatable to the people, so it was really just meant to solve the first problem while pretending to solve the latter. The “social” aspects of the social credit score (subtracting points when someone commits a crime, public disturbance, etc.) are inconsistently applied across various localities and practically vestigial, most Chinese are not even aware that they exist. It’s ironic that this socialist coat of paint on one of the most capitalistic elements in the Chinese economy makes Americans think it’s dystopian, while in reality the most dystopian parts of it are the ways that it’s identical to our credit system.