Inside China’s surveillance state
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I highly recommend Martin Jacques' Ted talk [0] on this very subject from over 7 years ago. I believe this aspect of Chinese culture -- of treating the state as being a BIG part of your daily life -- is super important to grasp if one wishes to get a sense of Chinese thinking and way-of-life.
It's also a starting point if one wishes to imagine how a future China might turn out to be.
Well, for me, it's just like to saying "Oh, Chinese people just do that sometimes".
It's a quite ignorant view actually, because when you look at Taiwan and Hongkong, it's very easy to found that Chinese people can adapt to many systems rather than the 'good' old authoritarianism.
Mainland China current running by the Communist Party is actually because of many historical reason, rather than a choice of Chinese people.
Also, one thing some people from the west don't understand that the Chinese government lead by the CCP also generates many many benefits to the Chinese people, and doing a not-bad job protecting their citizens. And those benefits are not easy to be ditched away.
Another thing that I want to mention is, China will never be 'Westernized', it will instead to be 'Modernized'. And you can clearly see modernization everywhere in China during these 7 years.
In fact, for me, the word 'Westernized' is pretty arrogant: It assumes the 'West' should set the rule and standard for the world. And you just can't assume that, just like you can't assume all your neighbors one day will follow the exact schedule like you do. They just don't.
Also, about Han[0]'s superiority: First thing is, you maybe don't know that the Chinese government provide better benefits[1] to those ethnic minority groups than Han people did.
As a Han myself, I personally don't feel like that I'm superior than others. In fact, start from the kindergarten, we been educated to respect other ethnic groups and at least know what not to. For example: Don't eat pork in front of Hui[2] people.
Yes, many people still don't completely understand all those rules or just don't care about it after they grown up, but you can't deny the education is there.
Even there is superiority between Han and other ethnic groups, then that would be very similar as in C++ programmer vs PHP programmer, rather than black vs white.
Then, about Uyghurs[3]. To be honest, I don't fully understand the problem there. But I think the tight control that the government has implemented there is at some part due some terrorist attacks[4][5][6][7][8](are originated from Xinjiang). And you can think of how many pressure the center government has pushed on Xinjiang's administration, so maybe that's why they did something that not so civilized.
I'm not saying it's understandable or forgivable, they are not resolving problem from the root there. What I'm trying to say is: Maybe things happened in Xinjiang was not about ethnic superiority as some west people may think it is.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Chinese
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_minorities_in_China#Gua...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hui_people
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghurs
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_China
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Kashgar_attack
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Tiananmen_Square_attack
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Kunming_attack
[8] https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E5%B9%B4%E6%96%B0%E7%96%8... (No English version available)
In a way I'm relieved the West is lagging behind on this but I found the whole article very worrying indeed. Individual digital rights have never been more urgent or important in the West to delineate 'free' society, life, liberty, pursuit of happiness etc...
Sesame Credit:
These Chinese surveillance state stories are all really tame compared to the abuses of the American program.
You are wrong.
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2018/05/31/china-has-turn...
The Chinese program is about homeland security and domestic stability.
I am completely and entirely correct.
> In 2014, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden said in a public debate, “We kill people based on metadata.”
> According to multiple reports and leaks, death-by-metadata could be triggered, without even knowing the target’s name, if too many derogatory checks appear on their profile. “Armed military aged males” exhibiting suspicious behavior in the wrong place can become targets, as can someone “seen to be giving out orders.” Such mathematics-based assassinations have come to be known as “signature strikes.”
> “When I learned about signature strikes, that was incredible,” Faisal says. “If the criteria is being armed or having a beard – that is everyone in Yemen.”
1. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-...
Chinese concentration camps and black jails are at the level of WWII era horrors. They disappear people around the world just by sending made up arrest request and taking them to China.
Drone assassination program, kills based off metadata score.
Global rendition and torture program. Largest prison population on the planet, exhibiting UN criticized torture, forced sterilization.
China:
Has no drone assassination program. Does not kill based off metadata score.
National rendition program.
Tortures, disappears, organ harvest, forced rendition from foreign countries based on mass and metadata in thousands or tens of thousands peer year (ethnicity, gender, number of foreign phone calls, or family members outside country). People in concentration camps are executed "on demand" in order to provide organs to recipients.
But at least your argument has a strong thesis.
You'll never see Fox News or MSNBC take it seriously (Except when it touches identity politics, like gun registries. Then, all of a sudden, it's a huge issue! Imagine, the government having a record of all gun owners!)
Of all the NSA revelations, it was the least controversial one. It was a glorified fax machine.
False. You see it all the time.
> ... even though it is far more extensive and aggressive than China.
Not sure I buy that, either. The US may be more aggressive in terms of information collected, and in terms of global scope. It's less aggressive than China in terms of being used to control the lives of the entire population of the country, though.
But really keep focusing on China. Have a feeling this strategy will work great for you.
I'm not sure that's true.
NSA and other US domestic surveillance capabilities feed the information it gathers passively (they call it "strategic listening") for DoD to understand how to influence entire countries, continents, world opinion.
For example, DARPA has a current program called SMISC: "Social Media in Strategic Communication" - where they are studying next generation technologies for determining how information and opinions spread by social media for US intelligence and military botnets and troll armies to influence opinions at scale. This is just a small evolution over the information domination US intelligence and security has applied domestically and globally for decades.
The Guardian and The Intercept both did exactly that (which is why you know about the Cisco/NSA thing by the way). I believe French and German newspapers also did something similar.