US Investors Must Stop Financing Beijing’s Repression

Among the most ominous features of the Chinese Communist Party’s intensifying totalitarianism is the advent of its so-called “social credit score.” Think George Orwell on steroids.

By using a combination of tens of millions of surveillance cameras, artificial intelligence to mine the cameras’ data streams and advances in the ability to recognize individuals by their faces or even how they walk, China’s regime seeks to monitor literally everyone in the country. Those who don’t conform to its dictates get a bad social credit score and can be denied travel, education, jobs, housing, etc. – or imprisoned. A particular target are religious minorities.

The Financial Times reported last week that Chinese companies involved in this appalling abuse of technology – and intent on exporting it elsewhere – are tapping U.S. capital markets and indexes to get funding from American institutional and other investors. That must stop.