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RFA: Communist Youth League Pushes a Social Credit System App for China’s Youth

Recently, the Communist Youth League Central Committee (CYLCC) launched a big-data credit app in partnership with the State-owned Tsinghua Unigroup. People with good scores can enjoy preferential treatment in education and employment. Analysts believe this is another attempt to control young people’s behavior.

The app is called Unictown. It is available for free download at the Apple Store. Each user of the app receives a credit score between 350 and 800. The user may be entitled to tuition discounts or preferential treatment in job hunting.

Citing the South China Morning Post, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported that, unlike the three credit rating companies in the United States, Unictown gathers and analyses a huge amount of non-economic and non-financial data. Academic publications, inventions, and volunteer activities may increase the user’s rating, while cheating on exams and plagiarism may lower his rating.

Analysts believe that this is nothing but the digitalized version of the personnel files that the Chinese Government has on everyone in China which follow a citizen all of his life. Online postings critical of the Chinese Government will likely lead Unictown users to have lower credit scores.

Unictown is said to be one of the products in the China Youth Credit Management (CY Credit) system that CYLCC and Tsinghua Unigroup have established. CY Credit is expected to cover all Chinese between the ages of 18 and 45, estimated at around 460 million.

Source: Radio Free Asia, March 25, 2019
https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/meiti/xql-03252019104215.html