HONG KONG - China Railway Construction deployed thousands of workers over four years to build part of a coal-carrying line from Inner Mongolia to Jiangxi province - about the same distance as midtown Manhattan to Walt Disney World Resort in Florida.
"It's a typical credit rating but sort of on steroids," said Andrew Polk, co-founder of Beijing-based Trivium China, which consults with companies on social credit."The system will be widely used in China to oversee domestic and foreign companies, and firms have to assign resources to keep a real eye on making sure their records are clean."
China says the point is to scare companies straight: that is, make the threats of naming, shaming and penalising so dire they won't evade taxes, mistreat customers or workers, or promote grandiose claims about their products. Yet some worry that it could be used to force companies to toe the party line.
"Many companies are concerned that it offers too much leeway for local interpretation that could be used to discriminate against foreign companies." That prospect arose recently when National Basketball Association games were pulled from both state TV and Tencent Holdings' online stream after a team executive tweeted support for pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. Local sponsors cut ties, and the league said it suffered substantial losses.
There's no connection between social credit and the unreliable entities list, said an NDRC official, who asked not to be named in accordance with government policy.
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