China

'Best-behaved' Chinese citizens are now rewarded with cheaper travel and cheaper loans

Unusual Whales

Jun 15, 2023 • 1 min read

Per Bloomberg

China has long been known to surveil its citizens, and now, the country is offering rewards to citizens that qualify as being best-behaved. These rewards are designed to incentivize citizens to act better.

The rewards include travel discounts for individuals but on top of that; companies would also be getting rewards as well. When it comes to companies, those that qualify for being best-behaved will get access to cheaper loans.

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism of China announced the rewards, which detailed their plans to widen a "pilot injecting stimulus" directly into their tourism sector. This comes as an extension of its social credit system.

The social credit system is China's way of rewarding good behavior and punishing bad ones. The incentives are an extension of a program for "districts and cities that relied on various municipal or sector-specific scores."

The rewards would also be given to tourism companies that get good scores.

The country saw an influx of Chinese citizens returning to certain travel spots at levels that exceeded pre-pandemic numbers. However, it was noted that they didn't spend as much.

China had reportedly experienced a shrinking population in 2022 for the first time since 1960. This came as only 9.56 million babies were born in 2022, compared to the 10.62 million born in 2021.

This also came as a total of 10.41 million died. It was reported that in 2022, China had 1.41 billion people, which was 850,000 fewer compared to its numbers at the end of 2021.

In October, it was reported that new home sales in China dropped by 37.7% year-over-year, with Hangzhou seeing the steepest decline as it dropped by 80%. During that period, it was also reported that tourist trips over the National holiday were down 18.2% year-over-year.

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