Lankford Continues to Call Out Communist Chinese Government for Privacy Abuses, Blacklisting Social Scores for Chinese Citizens

CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s Q&A on YouTube.

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) today participated in Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), on which he serves as a commission, hearing entitled, “Techno-Authoritarianism: Platform for Repression in China and Abroad.” Lankford’s questions focused on the communist Chinese government’s misuse of data and how American companies can better protect themselves, ongoing privacy concerns, and China’s use of a “social score” to determine a person’s worth to the communist government.

Lankford continues to caution vigilance of the communist Chinese government amid China’s growing regional influence and highly questionable technology and data use practices. Lankford recently called out China once again for its human rights abuses after the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) released its report entitled, “To Make Us Slowly Disappear: The Chinese Government’s Assault on the Uyghurs.” Lankford joined all Senate Finance Republicans in a letter to President Biden requesting that the Administration begin digital trade negotiations with our allies and partners in Asia. Lankford joined Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and 18 senators to send a letter to President Biden urging the Administration to oppose the European Union’s (EU) unilateral implementation of a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) and to instead work with developed countries on policies targeted at the largest greenhouse gas emitters like China.

The panel of witnesses at today’s hearing included Geoffrey Cain, author of The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey into China’s Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future; Samantha Hoffman, Senior Analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute; Yaqiu Wang, Senior Researcher on China at Human Rights Watch; and Jonathan Hillman, Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies and author of The Digital Silk Road: China’s Quest to Wire the World and Win the Future.

Excerpt

Lankford; There has been a lot of conversation about a social score for Chinese citizens in the surveillance state that they live under that they’re all graded internally and receive some sort of scoring and they get access to mass transportation, to jobs, to moving, to being able to have the ability to travel overseas. What do you know about the social scoring of individuals in China?

Wang: The Social Credit Score system, in its current form is actually a black list. So, for example, if you have not fulfilled your obligations, such as you had a loan that you didn’t pay on time, then you would be on this list and then it would affect your daily life. When you go to a train station, you cannot buy a ticket because of your record of not paying a loan. It doesn’t only affect you, it also affects your family. And there are instances where children cannot be enrolled in the school system because their parents have not paid the loan. So it’s a punishment. Guilty by association…

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