Reportedly, they tried in on the streets of San Francisco, and their phones blew up.
- A province in northern China developed an app to tell users whether they are within a 500-meter radius of someone in debt, state media said.
- It’s called a “map of deadbeat debtors,” the China Daily state-run newspaper reported.
- It hopes to get citizens to monitor the so-called debtors and report them to authorities if they seem “capable of paying their debts.”
- It’s part of China’s invasive “social credit” system, designed to judge a person’s trustworthiness. People have already been punished by it.
A province in northern China developed an app to tell people whether they are walking near someone in debt, according to state media.
The app, named the “map of deadbeat debtors,” rolled out to people in Hebei, the state-run China Daily newspaper reported. They can access it on WeChat, the country’s most popular instant-messaging platform.
The program flashes a warning to show a user that they are within a 500-meter radius of someone in debt.
It shows the debtor’s exact location, according to a screenshot of the app.
It’s not clear whether the app displays a debtor’s name, photos, or any other identity markers.
It’s also not clear how much money one must owe — or to whom — to be defined as a debtor.
The app wants to get citizens to keep an eye on the so-called debtors.
China Daily said it would let people “whistle-blow on debtors capable of paying their debts.”
It did not say what behavior could flag someone as capable of paying their debts.
Chinese families traditionally emphasize saving money to avoid spending with borrowed money or owing personal debt.
Social-credit system
The new program comes as part of China’s social-credit system, an extension of a person’s financial credit score that will be mandatory in 2020.
It essentially judges a person’s trustworthiness using measures like their ability to pay off loans and their behavior on public transport.
The argument for a social-credit system is that many people in China still have no formal access to traditional banks and therefore need an alternative system to assess whether they can pay off loans, rent houses, or even send their children to school.
