If you ask Americans and Europeans to name the biggest threats to their personal privacy, many might say Google or the U.S. National Security Agency. But as Western societies debate the legal limits for collecting and sharing data post-Edward Snowden, and as international companies work on encryption technologies to keep the state at bay and users at ease, a whole new surveillance game is under way in China.

These plans aren’t widely understood in the West, but their contours are already clear. The government will try to link a large amount of public and private data, with the goal of building the world’s first all-encompassing system of cybersurveillance. The consequences of this big-data-enabled, information-technology-backed authoritarianism will be far-reaching, not only for Chinese citizens and businesses but for anyone connected to a person or entity in China.

Already, we can see this in the creation of a so-called Social Credit System, the goal of which is to monitor individuals and companies based on a mix of information from financial institutions and law-enforcement agencies. Citizens now can expect that information from a diverse range of sources, such as employer evaluations, online shopping preferences or opinions expressed on social media, will be part of their social-credit score. The ratings will be made public and accessible online.

This isn’t entirely unlike Western financial-credit scoring systems, where a low score makes it more difficult to rent a house or to obtain a loan. But surveillance systems in democratic countries usually focus on one set of data, and ownership of data is highly fragmented. China’s system would link data used to evaluate financial activities with others that inform assessments of rule compliance and “socially responsible” behavior as defined by the Chinese leadership.

The system rewards “good behavior” and punishes “bad behavior.” Rule breakers can be blacklisted and excluded from economic activities or denied access to public services. Reckless driving might lower their chances for a good job. And they might be unfriended on social media for fear of guilt by association.