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Politics. Sociology. Nonfiction. HTML: 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 the China created the most terrifying surveillance state in history. China's new drive for repression is being underpinned by unpreÂcedented advances in technology: facial and voice recognition, GPS tracking, supercomputer databases, intercepted cell phone converÂsations, 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 moveÂment. 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 complicÂity 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 abroadâ??including to the United States. We Have Been Harmonized is a terrifying portrait of life under unprecedented government surveillanceâ??and a dire warning about what could happen anywhere under the pretense of national security. "Terrifying. ... A warning call." â??The Sunday Times (UK), a "Best Book of the Year so Far"… (more)
User reviews
Under the Social Credit System, all citizens are given a three-digit number. Think of it as a FICO score that covers
To get access to the lucrative Chinese market, Western companies, like Google, have agreed to remove all references to Tiananmen Square, 1989, June 4, or any other terms that the Communist Party would like to make disappear. There is facial recognition technology that can pick one person out of a stadium. In western China, more than one million Muslims have been sent to "re-education" camps.
This is a fascinating book. To see the "future" of total social control, look at present-day China. This book makes the worst of George Orwell look tame and boring. It is very much worth reading.