The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China

Countering latest hype round know-how, a number one knowledgeable argues that the endurance of dictatorship in China owes much less to facial recognition AI and GPS monitoring than to the human sources of the Leninist surveillance state.
For many years China watchers argued that financial liberalization and rising prosperity would deliver democracy to the world’s most populous nation. As an alternative, the Communist Get together’s grip on energy has solely strengthened. Why? The reply, Minxin Pei argues, lies within the effectiveness of the Chinese language surveillance state. And the supply of that effectiveness isn’t just superior know-how like facial recognition AI and cell phone monitoring. These are essential, however what issues extra is China’s huge, labor-intensive infrastructure of home spying.
Central authorities knowledge on Chinese language surveillance is confidential, so Pei turned to native stories, police gazettes, leaked paperwork, and interviews with exiled dissidents to supply an in depth have a look at the evolution, group, and ways of the surveillance state. Following the 1989 Tiananmen rebellion, the Chinese language Communist Get together invested immense sources in a coercive equipment operated by a comparatively small variety of secret law enforcement officials able to mobilizing thousands and thousands of citizen informants to spy on these suspected of disloyalty. The CCP’s Leninist bureaucratic construction―whereby officers and social gathering activists penetrate each sector of society and the economic system, from universities and village committees to supply corporations, telecommunication corporations, and Tibetan monasteries―ensures that Beijing’s eyes and ears are actually in every single place.
Whereas at this time’s system is much extra strong than that of years previous, it’s modeled after mass surveillance applied underneath Mao Zedong and Chinese language emperors centuries in the past. Rigorously empirical and wealthy in historic perception, The Sentinel State is a singular contribution to our data about coercion within the Chinese language state and, extra usually, the survival methods of authoritarian regimes.

From the Writer

Writer ‏ : ‎ Harvard College Press
Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 13, 2024
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print size ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0674257839
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0674257832
Merchandise Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.87 x 8.25 inches