Casual lurker, with some experience with China-style crazy, this strikes me as sensationalism. https://www.techinasia.com/china-citizen-scores-credit-system-orwellian From what I understand (from discussing this with real humans, second hand knowledge), China is known to limit which companies can develop and sell certain technological products before opening it up to other companies. These credit systems are not really Chinese government "official" but more like Chinese government "approved". It sounds like they just added some marketing gimmicks and adapted their systems to promote their main businesses. The China-oriented news sites I frequent haven't made any mention of any plans by the Chinese government to develop such a system (though it's possible they are). The impression I get is that these articles are a slightly sensationalist depiction of a misinterpretation of some Chinese government documents regarding the credit system that the CPC intends to roll out in 2020.