China: In their brand-new, in-depth study on the Chinese Communist Party's efforts to shape society through mass data collection and observation, Josh Chin and Liza Lin note that "state surveillance has been with us as long as there have been states."
In a sense, Surveillance State tells us, this is nothing new.
"Babylonian kings in what is now Iraq pioneered an early form of mass data collection, using cuneiform and clay tablets to keep a continuously updated record of people and livestock, dating back to 3800 BC."
None of this was invented by China, claims Chin in a video call from Singapore with Wall Street Journal colleague Lin. "Google, Facebook, and Amazon developed almost all of these technologies in Silicon Valley, where they were arguably used more effectively for data collection, analysis, and human behaviour prediction.
However, the Communist Party's use of these tools is more sinister than their original purpose of what is now known as surveillance capitalism—assembling digital dossiers on consumers to better sell their attention to advertisers. Or more altruistic, it might assert.
Chin emphasises that "the difference is what happens when you marry those technologies to a state power."
Chinese surveillance is extensive enough to be observed from space. Early in 2020, China had already installed 350 million cameras in public spaces, and 840 million smartphones were continuously providing location data.
Additionally, China's tech firms have been willing collaborators in granting access to their own enormous repositories of data on consumer behaviour, frequently connected to in-person subject observation.
The panopticon, a prison design by philosopher Jeremy Bentham that allowed for continuous observation of inmates in cells down multiple arms while viewed from a central point, appears to be the inspiration behind the basic concept.
Although it was actually impossible to keep an eye on every prisoner constantly, the Communist Party is ostensibly trying to apply this effect to the entire nation because it claims that the fear of being watched was enough to deter misbehaviour.
One of the people the authors spoke to discovered that if you raise a red flag in China or buy a catapult online just for target practise, you might get a knock on the door shortly after.
He explained to them, "They believed I was going to use it to shoot out their cameras.
Your data can be used by Facebook for a variety of purposes, perhaps even more so than by the Chinese government, claims Chin. However, you do have a very clear choice as to whether or not to use Facebook, and as of late, in Europe, you are able to demand that Facebook delete all of your data by visiting their website. You aren't given those options in China.
Facebook also cannot detain you. You cannot be jailed by Google. You can't be executed by Amazon.
Chin and Lin, however, are not the stereotypical "China-bashers" from hawkish think tanks. They have covered stories for The Wall Street Journal everywhere from the crowded boulevards of China's coastal cities to the farther-flung regions of Xinjiang.
The contrast between how surveillance is proudly marketed to the Han majority in the east of the country as a way to make lives safer and more comfortable and how it is used in the west to control the frequently unruly minority populations by identifying people for detention who the algorithms identify as potential future threats is a recurring theme in the book. The authors do, however, acknowledge the advantages of widespread surveillance and the willingness of many common Chinese people to accept it.
According to Chin, "you really can't run a modern state without gathering a lot of data and information about the people who live there." "That holds true for China or Russia just as much as it does for the UK or the US."
Although surveillance itself need not be authoritarian, systems that use AI and algorithms are frequently opaque, even to those who use them. There is no way to challenge the conclusions reached when these systems are used for prediction, despite the fact that there is evidence of error from all over the world.
Police have been known to modify surveillance systems to encourage them to confirm predetermined conclusions.
If you give Xi Jinping's system enough data and the appropriate algorithms, it can not only be more responsive but also predict the future, according to Chin.
Some police officers were happy to show the authors around their stations while they were hard at work catching people who were fly-tipping or parking illegally and smoothing traffic by predicting congestion. The identification and rescue of kidnapped children who had passed in front of the ubiquitous cameras was more significant. However, some claims were exaggerated.
"Numerous studies have demonstrated in the past that cameras will reduce crime, particularly petty crime and smaller crimes," claims Lin. "However, it's not related to the cameras themselves. The notion that there are cameras present is it. Crime decreases in that neighbourhood, but it increases in the neighbouring communities without cameras. In essence, you're moving the crime from one neighbourhood to another.
There is also proof that the technology isn't entirely up to the task, that different systems aren't as coordinated as claimed, that they're being operated poorly, or that they've been installed as vanity projects, possibly primarily to send the right signals back to Beijing or for the substantial kickbacks that such multimillion-yuan purchases can produce.
Lin believes that it would be conceited to claim that China is carrying out all of this activity to undermine the democratic social order. The fact remains that it is primarily acting in this way to serve its own interests and justify itself to its own citizens.
It's entirely possible that the entire endeavour will fail, claims Chin. But they have ingrained in Chinese citizens' minds that they are constantly being watched. And those efforts are paying off.
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