The article is written irresponsibly. Since the source it based on is a fabricated story. "open sesame" will open the door of hidden treasures for "Ali baba" (the company name behind it) based on Arabia fairy tales. Isn't it obvious this is at best a marketing stunt?
"Sesame Credit System" is a 3rd party online reputation (called Credit but not really) evaluation and tracking system run within the boundary of services provided by "Alibaba", the giant internet company in China equivalent of Amazon+Ebay+Facebook. While this system is based on big data, it takes in user's internet posts, the product you bought, etc into account, then produces a credit score, which is used if you want to apply loan from the same company, all this happens within the boundaries of services provided by one company, Alibaba. So it is not too different from Amazon reputation, or Reddit karma. The difference is the sesame score is cleverly named "Credit Score" and it has a range between 0 and 900, to confuse people, especially those who lives in the US
"Credit China" is a government run business complaint/case history tracking system, similar to BBB. It claims it also tracks 900k individuals, or 0.08% of the total population, however these individuals are most likely business representatives. This system does NOT generate a credit score as result. Unlike what the article claimed.
The two systems are not linked in any way. So, the foundation of the article is based on a frictional, "would-be" story. The article assumes Ali's credit system is the ultimate version of government credit system. It's easy to see that is unlikely and not feasible because government does not have access to the intimate details of buyer-seller relation, among other information. They may attempt to do it in a secret way, somehow. However, will they use secret info in a public credit score? My guess is unlikely.
You must realize no matter how big Alibaba is, they still have competitors (in fact, many huge companies as competitors), and China also have anti-monopoly laws. Alibaba's system is not implementable at the State level, because it requires a virtual monopoly of e-commerce, online communication, phone, etc by ONE company. Be it private or state-owned, that is the end of Chinese economy.
So even if the government will build a social credit system, it will be likely NOT based on online communications, your message on discussion forums, or buying/selling records. Those are still within each private company's database (like Alibaba). More likely, (and this is just my speculation) the government system is based on record of debt collection, loan, tax etc just like the US credit system today. The difference might be that it will be a government department, not three independent organizations, that keep credit scores. Then, there is the question of if your credit score needs to be accessible by other people. In most countries, you can pay a fee to get to know other people's credit score, for example, as part of background check. How easy/difficult Chinese government will make this process be, I can not predict.
