An Entire Nation Is Under Scrutiny, Thanks To Your Social Standing

America invented the three-digit credit score. Now companies in China are taking the idea to the extreme, using big data to track and rank what you do – your purchases, your pastimes, your mistakes.

Soon the government will join in. 

- Mara Hvistendahl

In 2015, when Lazarus Liu moved home to China after studying logistics in the United Kingdom for three years, he quickly noticed that something had changed: Everyone paid for everything with their phones. At McDonald’s, the convenience store, even at mom-and-pop restaurants, his friends in Shanghai used mobile payments. Cash, Liu could see, had been largely replaced by two smart phone apps: Alipay and We Chat Pay. One day, at a vegetable market, he watched a woman his mother’s age pull out her phone to pay for her groceries. He decided to sign up. To get an Alipay ID, Liu had to enter his cellphone number and scan his national ID card. He did so reflexively. Alipay had built a reputation for reliability, and compared to going to a bank managed with sloth like indifference and zero attention to customer service, signing up for Alipay was almost fun. With just a few clicks he was in. Alipay’s slogan summed up the experience: “Trust makes it simple”.