It seems to me that this credit score system--if real--would ultimately be self-defeating, for two reasons.
First, among a cynical and rebellious youth population, a low score would become a prestigious thing, proof of your courage and gutsy attitude, a kind of street cred.
Second, it would limit economic activity. If you cut off millions of people from car loans on the basis of their questionable postings or online affiliations, the ones really hurt will be the banks and car companies. Idiotic, and would lead to many companies disregarding the "credit" scores.
I don't see this as workable, though it does sound like something the government would like to have.
Not sure what your understanding of China is, but I want to correct your assumption of (1).
Most Chinese youth arent rebellious in any substantial way. They've grown up in an environment that is strongly Confucian, and there isn't really this "be what you want to be, break free, live life, freedom of youth" narrative that we have in most of the developed world. Kids are very very unrebellious and I doubt there would grow a culture of 'showing off' your bad credit score.
On the 2nd point, I'm not sure either. The political element of this is likely to be a small factor, not a prime one. The government tends to be very specific these days about targeting people who are activists rather than cracking down on anyone who says anything. Finally, people in China are generally used to this kind of BS, and whether consciously or through 'brainwashing', they don't tend to randomly spout political positions or anti-government rhetoric unless they know they are on safe ground. I don't mean it won't be an oppressive, inefficient, opaque and abused system, just that it won't result in millions being locked out of loans or the economy suffering that much.
I am in agreement. Rule of law is a predictable stat that creditors like to evaluate risk. Thing is, China's application of law can be very political. So while creditors can't predict that the legal system will work as expected like in America or Western Europe, they can predict that even economically successful political dissidents are at a measurable risk to losing everything very quickly.
On the second point, presumably companies providing finance actually benefit from a scoring system which negatively weights people's propensity to involve themselves in the sort of "activism" the Chinese government tends to sanction them for. People imprisoned, prevented from finding employment or with assets frozen tend to miss payments on their loans.
Statistically speaking, in the current climate I bet there are more government officials getting arrested and losing their assets on corruption charges than there are activists suffering the same.
One social factor that might be important is that people who complain/moan/get hung up on politics and principles aren't very likely to succeed in a country where you have to be very bloodyminded and flexible to deal with the amoral business environment in China. I would guess that if a person is constantly sending anti-government or whiney political messages, it's kind of like a 'loser' stamp here, and that might affect your credit score.
Nope, it's the same rebellion in China as the rest of the world.
No one likes the Confucian stuff in School, and it's just some gibberish text in the textbook, and you were required to recite it word by word after you 'read it aloud with strong emotion'. Yes, that's how most texts were studied by Chinese pupil and (junior-)high school students.
As showing off bad credit score? Once we were proud not to be a part in the Youth League[1]. Eventually they made everyone of us in, in the ninth grade.
First, among a cynical and rebellious youth population, a low score would become a prestigious thing, proof of your courage and gutsy attitude, a kind of street cred.
Second, it would limit economic activity. If you cut off millions of people from car loans on the basis of their questionable postings or online affiliations, the ones really hurt will be the banks and car companies. Idiotic, and would lead to many companies disregarding the "credit" scores.
I don't see this as workable, though it does sound like something the government would like to have.
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