How do they handle assessing creditworthiness, then? Ex. someone walks into a bank and asks for a loan to buy a house. How does the bank evaluate that?
And so on. Bunch of questions and documents back and forth until the bank is confident you'll pay back.
It's funny to hear people from North America talking about the scary new Chinese "Social Points" system when they've had credit score for such a long time they don't even think about it anymore and find alternatives strange and hard to imagine.
The credit score in the US is based entirely upon one's assets, income, current amount of debts, and payment history. It doesn't include what one posts on social media or what political party one votes for. At least not yet.
The US credit score has nothing to do with income. In Europe if you have good income you can get a credit. As an immigrant to the US with no US credit history that is near impossible. In the US you start with the worst possible credit score and need to take on debt to prove that you are worthy to take on debt, which is crazy. As a counter example in Germany you are basically born with the perfect credit score, and you can only make it worse (e.g. by not paying back a loan).
As another person responded - based on your income and situation ( family, age, stability of the job) and very basic loan history ( stored at the central bank, basically for the lender to know if you have outstanding debts and if you've defaulted on loans before)