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The MoA Week In Review – OT 2021-001
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
Elena_MYL @Elena_MYL – 2:28 UTC · Dec 29, 2020
I search a bit about #ZhangZhan online and here’s what I found. She was detained several times before, from 10 days to 65 days since 2019. She got warning for the first time in 2018.
Pic. She’s holding an umbrella says” End socialism, take down CPC”.
She’s a Christian zealot with a strong tendency towards martyrdom. She made hunger strike several times during the detention.
She had psychiatric assessments during the detention since she kept talking Jesus, Bible, God, etc.
Here’s video from her YouTube channel. She spoke in a very slow speed. “I preached gospel to her : The cross of Jesus Christ bears the sins of everyone, salvation is found in no one else, but Jesus. Actually I’d prefer to preach gospel to those cops and ppl who quarantined her.
Here is an article she wrote accusing Chinese government acting like god. She used the word “神” (God) 62 times.
#ZhangZhan regards herself undertaking God’s mission. Somehow reminds me of Adrian Zens who fabricated Uyghur genocide claiming he’s been led by God against Beijing. …
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Other issues:
Covid-19:
John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch – 8:07 UTC · Dec 31, 2020
NEW chart thread:
The latest UK Covid data paints a dire picture, with London and much of the south now in a worse position than they were at the spring peak, and hospitals struggling to cope
18% of tests in London now come back positive, and rates are climbing everywhere.
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20:04 UTC · Jan 2, 2021
We can also look at data not only on how many Covid patients are in hospital, but what share they make up of *all* available beds.
Covid patients now occupy more than half of all beds in many areas (and rising fast), including 63% in North Middlesex.
Infodemic:
> We’re talking about treating very, very large populations, which means that you’re going to see the usual run of mortality and morbidity that you see across large samples. Specifically, if you take 10 million people and just wave your hand back and forth over their upper arms, in the next two months you would expect to see about 4,000 heart attacks. About 4,000 strokes. Over 9,000 new diagnoses of cancer. And about 14,000 of that ten million will die, out of usual all-causes mortality. No one would notice. That’s how many people die and get sick anyway. <
Gregg Carlstrom @glcarlstrom – 9:01 UTC · Dec 30, 2020
We really need to do a better job avoiding irresponsible headlines and tweets about the vaccine (like this one). It's not enough that the article contextualizes the story, because people don't always read the article:
California nurse tests positive over a week after receiving Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine: ABC
Ruben Carbajal @rubencarbajal – 19:55 UTC · Jan 1, 2021
Man Wins Lottery After Receiving Vaccine
Man Receives Junk Mail After Receiving Vaccine
Man Audited After Receiving Vaccine
Man Finds Extra Fries in Bottom of Bag After Receiving Vaccine
Poverty alleviation – 'Costly' but successful:
Nils Gilman @nils_gilman – 13:27 UTC · Feb 6, 2019
Number of Chinese living in extreme poverty (<$1.90/day):
1980: 835m
1990: 770m
1999: 508m
2008: 170m
2015: 10m (not a typo)
Put another way: 75% of global poverty reduction since the 1970s is a result of Chinese Communist Party domestic policy success. source
EU-China deal:
History:
Use as open thread …
Below is an English translation of the Russian article that Grieved linked to in comment # 161
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When the New Year is approaching, many children wonder which list of Santa Claus they got: naughty or diligent guys. And large Chinese companies are interested in whether they entered the top 8 best firms of the year or were included in the list of 42 outsiders.
At the end of 2020, the first stage of development of the Chinese corporate social credit system, which is also called the “social rating system”, will be completed. It is expected that new information will soon appear that will shed light on this system in the future.
The report from the Chinese strategic research firm Trivium presented one of the most balanced and comprehensive views on emerging technologies. Below is what we learned from the report:
The main conclusion: corporate social credit is not as complex and unusual as it seems. This is a giant corporate registry with a record of all violations. The system is still under development, but most of it is already operational and responsible for a wide range of corporate activities. There are few signs of discrimination against foreign companies, but the authorities are showing global ambitions in introducing this innovation, including with the participation of financial markets.
Brief chronology from the report:
1999: A research team from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences proposed a “National Credit Management System” as a solution to market imperfections.
2000: The development of the social credit system is discussed at the annual meeting of the Chinese authorities.
2002: an updated 1999 version says that loans are probably the right path to a stable economy and a socialist society in general. The updated document was also considered rules of the United States credit and financial risk assessment.
2003: Shanghai launches social rating pilot project.
2014: Chinese authorities officially begin work on the social credit system and create a 15-year plan for its development. It was decided to create black and red lists, as well as a system of fines.
2015: The State Council approved the creation of a national unified system of social credit for legal entities and companies. Business registration numbers are replaced with a single social credit identifier — a unique number that is issued to each company to link the system account. This is the beginning of creating a legal framework for the development of the corporate social credit system.
2016-2018: most black and red lists are created.
2019: The State Council calls on the authorities to speed up the implementation of the corporate social credit system. Algorithms for regulating the system are created.
Real problems: The Trivium-USCC report states that the social credit system emerged as a response to real compliance problems. Companies often ignored court orders, and even if they faced real consequences, management could simply leave the debt-ridden firm and open a new one. A document from 1999, which proposed the creation of a social credit system, referred to this problem. Experts noted that a significant part of violations goes unnoticed, and people do not bear any responsibility. The system was designed to name, shame and punish companies and their management for violations. To this day, China’s biggest blacklist is considered to be the list of debtors of the Supreme Court.
A librarian’s Dream
The Chinese social credit system is a large accounting system that combines information about various public and private companies.
Data: For each company, there is a folder with a set of documents that is tracked and managed by a special identification number.
The folder contains all the important information about the company: share capital, annual reports, corporate structure, etc.
Various government departments at all levels contribute additional information: tax reports, personnel composition (including information on how many party members work for the company), the presence of lawsuits and new strategies for working with competitors.
Information received from government agencies is the basis of the company’s reporting. As of 2016, the system contains more than 400 categories, and this list may be updated in the near future.
Chinese authorities are also agitating non-governmental organizations to provide their data to the system. However, this part of the social credit system has not yet been fully defined.
“In most cases, the provision of data is a voluntary desire,” the Trivium report explains.
Access: Most of the data collected by the system is published through online credit platforms such as Credit China or Tianyancha.
Trivium estimates that about 75% of the data collected by government agencies is intended for public access. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has created an online platform where public information can be viewed.
Work in progress: interaction between agencies remains incomplete, so the system does not cover the full scope of the national platform’s capabilities, said Louise Kinzius, project manager at Sinolytics, a Berlin-based consulting firm that helps foreign companies navigate Chinese politics.
A lot of information goes from the bottom up, from local authorities to the national platform.
“China’s social credit system is a bit of a puzzle. Something is constantly changing and modernizing, ” Kendra Schaefer, lead author of the Trivium report and head of the firm’s technical policy research department, told TechNode.
Trivium found that 89% of customs blacklist entries are publicly available on the Credit China platform. For comparison, the Ministry of Transport has 25% available, and the Ministry of Industry and Information has 20% of records.
The Trivium report says that Shanghai is leading the way in the reasonableness and completeness of the credit system. At the end of 2018, local authorities had centralized data from 88 government agencies and 11.3 million companies.
Carrot and stick
The corporate social credit system is not just about data accounting. The system creates incentives for compliance. The platform has two control systems: rewards and punishments. Companies are controlled through black and red lists, as well as a points system.
Lists: government agencies can put companies on the black list or on its opposite — the red list. The first one is for violations, and the second one is for successes and achievements. If a company is included in one of the lists, it is reflected in its social rating system.
Louise Kinzius says blacklists are much more common than red ones. In China, much attention is paid to identifying violations.
However, red lists are also necessary, as they create a new type of thinking that has a beneficial effect on compliance with the requirements of the system.
All lists are controlled by interdepartmental disciplinary bodies. Some managers have concluded contracts in such a way that a violation in one point will lead to punishment by a number of departments.
For example, a company that is blacklisted by the Ministry of Agriculture will face fines or penalties in 25 different departments. The Ministry of Natural Resources can impose restrictions on the use of public land, and the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) or the Securities Regulatory Commission can prohibit the issuance of shares and bonds of the company.
On the other hand, a logistics firm on the Ministry of Transport’s red list will have access to 63 benefits, from expedited import and export licenses from the Ministry of Commerce to preferential access to financing from the People’s Bank of China.
Personal responsibility: The corporate social credit system links the behavior of key employees to the company’s rating. Employees can receive a fine if the company is blacklisted. Also, the success of the company is directly influenced by the people who work in it. But these connections only exist in very specific areas, in part because the personal social credit system is not as developed as the corporate social credit system, Kinzius said.
To get into the red list of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, the company should not have any penalties for the last 3 years. In order for a firm to receive high scores from customs, key employees of the company must not have criminal records.
One American company was banned from participating in the trade show because the firm’s management was blacklisted for legal violations unrelated to the company, Trivium explained to TechNode.
Ratings: The corporate social credit system includes several types of ratings designed to use government data provided by various government agencies and some private entities. These include both letter ratings and numeric scores. The assessment consists of several points, which are related to whether the company complies with standard requirements. This analysis is performed automatically, as opposed to data collection.
According to Kinzius, getting the lowest or highest rating can lead to the same consequences as getting on one of the lists and even sanctions.
Some ratings are national, such as the rating of companies building waterways and roads compiled by the Ministry of Transport. Others are being created by local authorities, such as the hospital assessment system, the Trivium report says.
Agencies also evaluate companies on the quality of their products and services. Many of them are compiled by industry associations based on government data.
Financial credit scores are awarded by licensed credit rating agencies.
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Posted by: psychohistorian | Jan 5 2021 2:08 utc | 161
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