The proposal to introduce Digital ID as a mandatory tool for access to work in the United Kingdom is not merely an administrative modernization effort. It represents a highly dangerous precedent, shifting Western society toward a path that is already well known and tested: the digital control model used by the Chinese state to maintain its authoritarian system.

In China, digital identification, monitoring, and evaluation systems did not appear overnight. They were introduced gradually under seemingly reasonable justifications: efficiency, security, and fraud prevention. Today, these mechanisms allow the state to control access to employment, services, housing, transportation, and freedom of movement, sustaining a rigid political system through constant surveillance and conditional access.

The same logic underpins Digital ID. Linking the right to work to a centralized digital system transforms a fundamental right into a revocable privilege. What matters is no longer the law alone, but your status within a state-managed digital system. A technical error, administrative suspension, or political decision can directly affect a person's ability to earn a living.

Supporters argue that "this is not the same thing." But no system of control looks extreme at the beginning. The shift from democracy to authoritarianism does not happen overnight; it happens step by step, through the acceptance of "temporary," "limited," and "well-intentioned" measures. This is precisely how China's digital control infrastructure was justified.

The claim that Digital ID combats illegal work is misleading. China did not eliminate abuse through digitalization; it concealed it within a system of forced compliance. Digital ID does not end exploitation-it gives the state and employers an additional lever of pressure over workers, who know that any issue with their digital status can cut off their livelihood.

More troubling, Digital ID creates the perfect infrastructure for manipulation and enforced conformity. When access to work depends on a single digital system, people are discouraged from protesting, dissenting, or stepping outside the approved line. This is a core reason why the Chinese system remains effective: economic control produces social and political control.

The issue is not technology itself, but the concentration of power. A state that controls digital identity, work eligibility, and access to essential resources effectively controls its citizens. Once established, such an infrastructure can be abused by any government.

The West does not become authoritarian through one law, but by accepting the idea that it is "normal" for the state to digitally decide who is allowed to work and who is not. This is the very mechanism that keeps China operating as a functional communist system: not ideology alone, but total digital control.

Digital ID for work is not progress. It is the adoption of a model that functions precisely because it restricts freedom. And a society that borrows the tools of authoritarianism-even with declared good intentions-will inevitably begin to resemble it.