Suining County, Jiangsu Province, created an unprecedented "good citizen" rating system where every aspect of a citizen's private life is collected into a public system that awards or takes away points for certain acts. A high-ranking county Party secretary wants "strict management of morals" to persuade the masses that "Once a promise is kept, benefits follow; once a promise is broken, constraints abound."

In my opinion, it is an abuse of power and loss of civil rights. We see a gross interference by the Suining government into people's private spheres.

From the beginning, the so-called "good citizen" rating cannot be justified or legitimate. This author thinks, with the emergence of the "good citizen" rating, no matter if you're an "ordinary citizen" or even a "bad citizen," this kind of system is turning citizens into subjects, into objects the government can order around at will.

The logic behind the "good citizen" rating blurs the distinction between citizen and subject. In modern Chinese, a subject is someone who obeys the ruler in an autocracy. The subject is the product of an autocratic society; under the control of the system and its related laws and ethics, the subject becomes the ruler's dependent, without any rights to equality and, under this ideology, loses all sense of his identity. The biggest distinction between a subject and citizen is their different status in each political system: The outcome of a patriarchal and autocratic society is a subject who is the ruler's dependent, whereas the outcome of modern society and democracy is a person with his own identity and freedom. But in the mandatory rating system, we only see subjects rather than a respect for citizens.

We can see that the government and citizens are in a kind of server-customer relationship, and in a country under the rule of law, the government's legitimacy is determined mostly through affirming and guarding citizens' civil rights, recognizing people's values as paramount; and ensuring that each citizen develops his individuality, morality, spirit and mind and other aspects regarding independence and freedom. Under the standard of civil rights, citizens can demand, and obtain, expected services provided by the server [the government], and they can refuse any services they don't expect. But in the personal credit rating system, it can be seen that citizens don't have the slightest right to choose, and this implies the loss of civil rights.

At this point, my country's government power remains in a powerful and dominant position, while individual rights are generally weak, and this reality is reflected in the "good citizen" rating system. The intention behind "Once a promise is kept, benefits follow; once a promise is broken, constraints abound" may be good, but as the holder of public power, the government should not just have a lofty purpose, it also needs to consider its activities' validity and legality.

Thus, this author thinks, the personal credit rating system takes government power to an extreme and signifies the retreat of individual rights.

(This post was first published in Chinese and translated by Ma Yujia.)