[yorwba]

Basically any attempt to make statements about "the" social credit system in China is going to be at least slightly wrong, since there is no single system. There are several pilots of different possible implementations, but no complete system yet (both of your sources actually mention this). Some are run by private financial companies to determine eligibility for their loans, some are run by city governments to provide credit rating for companies (e.g. https://wzcredit.gov.cn/ ) and apparently some rely on neighbors reporting each other. (This is the first time I heard about that one, though.)

The blacklist that prevents people from buying high-speed train tickets is http://zxgk.court.gov.cn/shixin/ and it usually works as a court-ordered punishment between fines and a prison sentence. The intention seems to be to target people who owe money and falsely claim not to have it by preventing their ability to spend it on "luxury." I.e. if you have the money to take a faster train, they'd prefer it if you used that to pay your debts.

[socceroos]

Yikes, how horrifying