Who is moving to China to get a “social score”?

How does the social credit system work?
The target, eventually, is that the government system will be country wide, with businesses given a "unified social credit code" and citizens an identity number, all linked to permanent record. "If you go to a credit China website, and you have an entity's credit code, you can type that in and pull up credit records," explains Hoffman. "Individuals will have ID-linked codes." It's less a score, she says, and more of a record.

Some reports talk about a blacklist; that's part of the official government social credit system, which means if you owe the government money, for example, you could lose certain rights. There's a difference between getting a low social credit score and being blacklisted by the government, such as for refusing to pay a fine.

The criteria that go into a social credit ranking depends on where you are, notes Ohlberg. "It's according to which place you're in, because they have their own catalogs," she says. It can range from not paying fines when you're deemed fully able to, misbehaving on a train, standing up a taxi, or driving through a red light.