A total of 4.9 million people have been forbidden to take airplanes for their poor credit record, in a move experts say aimed at improving China's social credit system and the corresponding punishment system.
Lian Weiliang, deputy head of the National Development and Reform Commission, said on Tuesday that 4.9 million people have been prohibited from taking airplanes and 1.65 million cannot take trains due to their credit defaults, the China News Service reported.
Lian said that China has improved its social credit system recently by assigning unified social credit code to every citizen and corporation. A nation-wide information sharing platform was set up to connect 37 government departments and it has collected more than 640 million pieces of information on credit.
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has rejected 2,833 loan applications and declined 210,000 credit cards applications from discredited applicants, according to Lian.
Moreover, Zhima Credit, a credit service owned by China's largest online commerce company Alibaba, has restricted 511,000 discredited consumers' overdrawing behavior, the China News Service reported.
Lian said that with such strict punishment, more than 400,000 discredited people have fulfilled their debt obligations voluntarily.
"The government should make the credit system transparent to the public. It should make the standard for punishment clear and allow people to appeal if they are dissatisfied with the penalty," Wang Zhenyu, a researcher with the China University of Political Science and Law, told the GLobal Times on Wednesday.
He added that China's rating system is still at its infancy.
A woman surnamed Su from East China's Shandong Province told the Global Times in a previous report that she had no idea she was on the blacklist for failing to pay back a loan following a local court ruling, until she failed to purchase a train ticket.
However, Wang warned that the government should pay more attention to people's privacy when building the credit system, especially as technologies become more advanced.
The establishment of a credit system does not mean people should be watched by the government; instead, "people should behave themselves to build an honest society," he added.
The official website of China' Supreme People's Court published personal information of individuals and names of corporations who failed to carry out court orders from all over China. These individuals and companies will face more difficulties if they want to participate in activities such as government procurement, tendering and bidding, and certification authentication.
