“Sesame Credit” is the PRC’s social credit system, in which people are scored based on such characteristics as their adoption of Xi Jinping Thought, their loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party, their actions in support of – or against – the CCP, and the score of their friends and family. Participation in this system is coerced and widespread, integrating many more into the party machine. One’s score on Sesame Credit grants them certain benefits if it’s high, but restricts freedoms if it’s too low. These freedoms can include things such as freedom of movement, freedom to post on social media, freedom to access certain sites, and so on.
So what does this mean for the PRC and her people? It means simply that the role of government in the lives of individuals within China will continue to expand, and expand, and expand, the state taking over more of peoples’ lives in its effort to grow into a true totalitarian oligarchy. And indeed, the growth of oligarchy leads us into the final arm of Chinese authoritarianism: economic colonialism. While Uyghur internment and Sesame Credit were created to keep internal strife at bay, and to prevent the growth of nonconforming geographic or societal sectors, economic colonialism serves a dual role of aiding the state on both the foreign and domestic approaches.
The benefits of a growing economic empire towards foreign policy are rather clear: it brings more states under the heel of Beijing. It grants China a greater buffer against American and European interests, and it gives it more room to take action and grow on the international scale. Domestically, it serves two roles. Firstly, it provides funding for the ever-growing state, allowing it to maintain its totalitarian expansion into peoples’ daily lives. Secondly, it play the same role that American imperialism has played for America, which is to find new markets for produced goods.
So how does this affect the international scale? How does this affect global trends? It plays right into the global trend towards authoritarianism, towards colonizers reemerging in a new form, and towards the repolarization of the world, shifting power away from the American base.