We have been harmonised

Life in China's surveillance state

Kai Strittmatter, Ruth Martin

• Publisher: Old Street Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781913083014
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Freedom
• Index: Politics & International Relations

CHINA TODAY. TOMORROW, THE WORLD?
In China's shiny new 'Smart Cities', citizens can scarcely cross the road or buy an orange without the Party knowing, and posting a satirical online comment about President Xi's Winnie-the-Pooh-like features can land you in jail.
A generation after the tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square, China's autocratic leaders are using powerful new technologies to create the largest and most effective surveillance state the world has ever seen.
This is a journey into a land where Big Brother has acquired a whole new set of toys with which to control and cajole -- 'harmonise' -- the masses. It is also a warning against Western complacency. Beijing is already finding eager buyers for its 'Operating System for Dictators' -- in Africa and Asia, Russia and the Middle East. And with China's corporate giants -- all ultimately under Party control -- being offered a place at the heart of Europe's vital infrastructure, it is time we paid attention.

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ENDNOTES

1 James Mann, The China Fantasy: Why Capitalism Will Not Bring Democracy To China, London 2008.

2 For more on the Communist Party’s appetite for experimentation and its ability to change, see Sebastian Heilmann, Red Swan: How Unorthodox Policy-Making Facilitated China’s Rise, Hong Kong 2018.

3 Stein Ringen, a Norwegian scholar of sociology and political science based at Oxford University, calls the CCP’s rule ‘the perfect dictatorship’ and terms it a ‘controlocracy’: ‘Although the controlocracy is sophisticated and does not depend on the omnipresence of terror, the threat of terror is omnipresent, and that threat is backed up by a physical use of violence that is sufficient for citizens to know that the threat is not an idle one.’ (Stein Ringen, The Perfect Dictatorship: China in the 21st Century, Hong Kong 2016, pp.139-140.)

4 A representative example here is the exposé in the New York Times concerning the family of Wen Jiabao. Until 2013, Wen was China’s prime minister, and state propaganda always painted him as the modest, folksy ‘Grandpa Wen’. The New York Times revealed that by the end of his period in office, his family had amassed a fortune of at least 2.7 billion dollars. See David Barboza, ‘Billions in Hidden Riches for Family of Chinese Leader’, New York Times, 25. 10. 2012 (https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/business/global/family-of-wenjiabao-holds-a-hidden-fortune-in-china.html).

5 Li Laifang, ‘Enlightened Chinese democracy puts the West in the shade’, Xinhua, 17. 10. 2017 (http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2017–10/17/c_136685546.htm).

6 Extract from interview with Hannah Arendt by the French writer Roger Errera, ‘Hannah Arendt: From an Interview’, The New York Review of Books, 26. 10. 1978 (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1978/10/26/hannah-arendt-from-an-interview/).

7 Herta Müller, ‘Every word knows something of a vicious circle’, Nobel lecture, 7. 12. 2009 (online: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2009/muller/25729-herta-muller-nobel-lecture-2009/)

8 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-in-cia-visit-attacks-media-for-coverage-of-his-inaugural-crowds/2017/01/21/f4574dca-e019-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html?utm_term=.a0405f7ed48c344

9 Victor Klemperer, The Language of the Third Reich: LTI: Lingua Tertii Imperii, trans. Martin Brady, London 2000, p.14

10 Viola Zhou, ‘Beijing party boss promises to eradicate online political rumours ahead of key party congress’, South China Morning Post, 27. 9. 2017 (http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2113041/beijing-party-boss-promises-eradicate-online-political).

11 Geremie R. Barmé, ‘New China Newspeak’, China Heritage Quarterly, No. 29, March 2012 (http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/glossary.php?-searchterm=029_xinhua.inc&issue=029).

12 Ibid.

13 George Orwell, 1984, New York, 1949, p.34

14 Anna Sun, ‘The diseased language of Mo Yan’, The Kenyon Review, autumn 2012 (https://www.kenyonreview.org/kr-online-issue/2012-fall/selections/anna-sun-656342/).

15 Geremie R. Barmé, ‘New China Newspeak’, China Heritage Quarterly, No. 29, March 2012 (http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/glossary.php?-searchterm=029_xinhua.inc&issue=029)....