We Have Been Harmonized
Description
Named a Notable Work of Nonfiction of 2020 by the Washington Post
As heard on NPR's Fresh Air, We Have Been Harmonized, by award-winning correspondent Kai Strittmatter,
offers a groundbreaking look, based on decades of research, at how China created the most terrifying surveillance state in history.
China's
new drive for repression is being underpinned by unprecedented advances in
technology: facial and voice recognition, GPS tracking, supercomputer
databases, intercepted cell phone conversations, the monitoring of app use,
and millions of high-resolution security cameras make it nearly impossible for
a Chinese citizen to hide anything from authorities. Commercial transactions,
including food deliveries and online purchases, are fed into vast databases,
along with everything from biometric information to social media activities to
methods of birth control. Cameras (so advanced that they can locate a single
person within a stadium crowd of 60,000) scan for faces and walking patterns to
track each individual's movement. In some schools, children's facial
expressions are monitored to make sure they are paying attention at the right
times. In a new Social Credit System, each citizen is given a score for good
behavior; for those who rate poorly, punishments include being banned from
flying or taking high-speed trains, exclusion from certain jobs, and preventing
their children from attending better schools. And it gets worse: advanced
surveillance has led to the imprisonment of more than a million Chinese
citizens in western China alone, many held in draconian ?reeducation? camps.
This digital
totalitarianism has been made possible not only with the help of Chinese private
tech companies, but the complicity of Western governments and corporations
eager to gain access to China's huge market. And while governments debate trade
wars and tariffs, the Chinese Communist Party and its local partners are
aggressively stepping up their efforts to export their surveillance
technology
abroad?including to the United States.
We Have Been Harmonized is a terrifying portrait of life under
unprecedented government surveillance?and a dire warning about what could
happen anywhere under the pretense of national security.
?Terrifying. ... A warning call." ?The Sunday Times (UK), a ?Best Book of the Year so Far?
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Kai Strittmatter was for more than a decade the China correspondent for Germany's national newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung. Fluent in Mandarin, he has studied China for more than 30 years, including extensive stints in Xi'an and Taipei. He is now a member of the advisory board at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin. Kai lives in Copenhagen where he works as a correspondent for the Scandinavian countries.
Content
- Intro
- Title Page
- Contents
- New China, New World: A Preface
- The Word: How Autocrats Hijack Our Language
- The Weapon: How Terror and Law Complement Each Other
- The Pen: How Propaganda Works
- The Net: How the Party Learned to Love the Internet
- The Clean Sheet: Why the People Have to Forget
- The Mandate From Heaven: How the Party Elected an Emperor
- The Dream: How Karl Marx and Confucius Are Being Resurrected, Hand in Hand With the Great Nation
- The Eye: How the Party is Updating Its Rule With Artificial Intelligence
- The New Man: How Big Data and a Social Credit System Are Meant to Turn People into Good Subjects
- The Subject: How Dictatorship Warps Minds
- The Iron House: How a Few Defiant Citizens Are Refuting the Lies
- The Gamble: When Power Stands in Its Own Way
- The Illusion: How Everyone Imagines Their Own China
- The World: How China Exerts Its Influence
- The Future: When All Roads Lead to Beijing
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- About the Author
- Copyright
- About the Publisher
