Chinese tech giant Alibaba is developing a digital “individual carbon footprint tracker” to monitor the actions of the public, the firm’s president announced at the globalist World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday.
Speaking at a “Strategic Outlook: Responsible Consumption” WEF panel in Davos, Alibaba Group President J. Michael Evans said that his company will be introducing more surveillance systems within China in order to usher in a so-called greener future.
“We are developing through technology the ability for consumers to measure their own carbon footprint… where are they travelling, how are they travelling, what are they eating, what are they consuming on the platform,” Evans said.
The former Goldman Sachs banker dubbed the project the “individual carbon footprint tracker,” saying: “stay tuned, we don’t have it operational yet but this is something we are working on.”
The Alibaba Group president said that the e-commerce platform, which operates similarly to Amazon and eBay — both of which do not operate in the Communist country — would be providing the data to merchants and individual users.
Evans did not disclose if the data would be shared with the government; however, like all Chinese corporations, Alibaba is beholden by law to provide data to the CCP, as it was reportedly pressured to do in January of last year.
The power which the central government has over the firm has also been publicly demonstrated by the “disappearing” of the billionaire founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma, in 2020 after he offered critiques of the Communist economic model. Though he reappeared briefly in 2021, Ma has reportedly lost some $10 billion of his net worth.
In addition to creating a carbon footprint tracker, Evans said that the firm is developing a “green travel” maps system in which people will be provided “the best route, the most efficient route, and the most efficient form of transportation and then if they take advantage of those recommendations, we will give them bonus points that they can redeem elsewhere on our platform.
“So they are incentivised to do the right thing even if they were provided the opportunity to do the wrong thing.”
Evans did not elaborate on what type of travel would represent doing the “wrong thing” according to Alibaba.
The proposal has sparked comparisons to the controversial Chinese social credit score system, which has seen millions of people barred from travelling for falling afoul of Beijing’s behavioural codes.
It has also been mocked in light of the fact that thousands of private jets typically ferry global elites to the World Economic Forum to enjoy the luxuries of the Swiss ski resort town every year.
Interestingly, the Alibaba Group president said that the purpose of introducing the green tracking measures was “not to make money” but rather to “contribute to our ESG commitments.”
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) rankings, which have also been compared to the Chinese social credit system, have been pushed by the likes of BlackRock and other major investment firms as a means of pressuring companies into abiding by woke diktats on the environment as well as on leftist tenets such as “diversity, equity, and inclusion”.
J. Michael Evans said on Tuesday that “every brand we talk to is interested in ESG,” suggesting that the “woke capitalist” scheme has also penetrated Communist China.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.