Driving Dystopias: China Doesn't Sound Terribly Fun
With China having become the world’s largest automotive market by individual sales, it’s worth keeping tabs on it for burgeoning driving trends. While that’s predominantly revolved around electric vehicles, the People’s Republic also has pretty strict driving rules backed by some of the tightest monitoring of a civilian population imaginable. China is setting up a vast surveillance system that tracks every single one of its 1.4 billion citizens and is adapting it for use in its new “social credit system,” which sounds like the most Orwellian thing in existence.
The system is intended to publicly shame criminals, debtors, jaywalkers, and those with “controversial” political views while monitoring their every move but it’s also doing a fine job of making life harder for drivers.
According to the BBC, one motorist in China’s eastern Shandong province received a traffic fine after camera captured him scratching his face and the associated artificial intelligence program assumed he was using his cell phone. The man, one Mr. Liu, claimed he had immediately received a notification from the government that he had been fined 50 yuan (around $7 USD) for using a phone while driving and would have two points added to his license. Attached was a photo of Liu scratching his face, which he promptly reposted to social media.
“I often see people online exposed for driving and touching [others’] legs,” he explained via Sina Weibo. “But this morning, for touching my face, I was also snapped ‘breaking the rules!'”
While we’re not sure how touching other people’s legs is a crime, so long as you get permission, using your cellphone while operating a motor vehicle is a minor taboo in most parts of the world. However, the old no-harm-no-foul adage didn’t play for Liu because he also claimed that nobody within the government was willing to help him resolve an issue that had added points to his license and was endangering his social credit score — which could result in him being barred from specific goods and services if it slips too low.
From the BBC:
The Global Times newspaper says that the city’s traffic authority have now cancelled his ticket, and told him that “the traffic surveillance system automatically identifies a driver’s motion and then takes a photo”, which is why his face-scratching had been mistaken for him taking a phone call.
While many online are amused by his case joking that the positioning of his hand signalled [sic] he certainly appeared to be on an “invisible” phone, some are also voicing their concerns about the level of surveillance placed on them.
“This is quite embarrassing,” says one, “that monitored people have no privacy.”
“Chinese people’s privacy – is that not an important issue?” another asks.
There are more than 170 million surveillance cameras and the country has plans to install a further 400 million by 2020.
The social credit system will take full effect in 2020. Meanwhile, tracking software has already been affixed to phones, with the Chinese government mandating that certain ethnic minorities within the nation download an app that allows it to monitor and access their photos, videos, phone calls, and other files. However, even the average citizen can expect to have their shopping behaviors monitored and their internet browsing curtailed today.
China has also called upon manufacturers in to furnish the government with reports that include where electric vehicles are at any given moment. As of 2018, over 200 automakers working inside China — including big names like Tesla, NIO, Volkswagen, Daimler, BMW, Ford, General Motors, Nissan, and Mitsubishi — have already agreed to transmit positional information and other forms of data to government-backed civilian monitoring centers.
Chinese officials have said that the data is being used exclusively for analytics that could help promote public safety and infrastructure planning while helping to avoid things like insurance or subsidy fraud. Automakers have said they’re simply complying with regional laws. You know, just following orders.
[Image: Destinyweddingstudio/Shutterstock; Sina Weibo]
A staunch consumer advocate tracking industry trends and regulation. Before joining TTAC, Matt spent a decade working for marketing and research firms based in NYC. Clients included several of the world’s largest automakers, global tire brands, and aftermarket part suppliers. Dissatisfied with the corporate world and resentful of having to wear suits everyday, he pivoted to writing about cars. Since then, that man has become an ardent supporter of the right-to-repair movement, been interviewed on the auto industry by national radio broadcasts, driven more rental cars than anyone ever should, participated in amateur rallying events, and received the requisite minimum training as sanctioned by the SCCA. Handy with a wrench, Matt grew up surrounded by Detroit auto workers and managed to get a pizza delivery job before he was legally eligible. He later found himself driving box trucks through Manhattan, guaranteeing future sympathy for actual truckers. He continues to conduct research pertaining to the automotive sector as an independent contractor and has since moved back to his native Michigan, closer to where the cars are born. A contrarian, Matt claims to prefer understeer — stating that front and all-wheel drive vehicles cater best to his driving style.
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Way to deal with your dissonance. Always amusing to see condescending and racist remarks about a sinister foreign country while ignoring Edward Snowden's whistle blowing revelations. The next time you guys board a plane, or cross a border (assuming you can afford to travel), or even apply for a loan, I'm sure you will collectively appreciate UR FREEHDUMS. All while your financial and monopoly and military overlords wage downward class warfare and strip you of whatever dignity you have left. Yet you fall for idiot distractions and scapegoat some irrelevant target.
Appropriate conversation on this 30th anniversary of Tiananmen. And a lot of well educated comments and viewpoints, I might add. I lived in China 2002-2003 and have gone back many times since (I'm American). The changes since then have been incredible, from poor 3rd world to middle class and plenty of flashes of exuberant wealth, and some of the world's best infrastructure. Very impressive. On the downside, as the internet has increased as part of our daily lives since that time, the CCCP has used digital tools to increase the isolation of their people and now surveillance. Like slowly boiling a lobster, truly 1984. Ironically, I feel these same efforts by the Chinese government to ultimately control everything keep their country from achieving what their hardworking and naturally entrepreneurial people could do, should they be truly free to pursue to their highest capabilities. If the Chinese were free people, then the American dynasty would really be threatened. As it is, most people in the world will happily consume Chinese labor, but not true Chinese innovative companies/products due to lack of trust (see Huawei). The American companies in social media and hardware need to work hard here to respect how they treat data , they could obviously be a lot better.