The Perfect Police State

I heard the author on a podcast where he described his career as a journalist, often undercover, in countries like North Korea, Russia, Cambodia, and China. I decided to read his book when he said that after his last trip to China in, I believe it was 2019, would be his last because the surveillance state that had arisen there had become too much even for him. This is a guy who doesn't blink an eye at going to North Korea.

The winter Olympics are going on in Beijing right now and just a couple days ago China used a Uyghur athlete as one of the people chosen to light the Olympic torch. In the context of this book, there's no other way to interpret that than as the Chinese government's condescending arrogance showing the world they can do whatever they want with no repercussions. They're giving apologists for their regime a story to point at to say “see, the condition of the Uyghur's in China is fine!” when the reality is that in 2017 about 20% of the eleven million Uyghur's in China were in concentration camps where they were being re-educated. This re-education, at least some of the time, includes physical torture, forced labor, and sterilization as described in detail in The Perfect Police State. There is no evidence that since 2017 that the conditions of the Uyghur's has changed—quite the contrary in fact. The Uyghur torchbearer from the 2008 Olympics is publicly denouncing China today.

The descriptions of the conditions that the Uyghurs live in in China are frequently compared to George Orwell's 1984. That may seem cliché since 1984 is usually used the same way people use Hitler—hyperbolically. Except that in China today, the comparisons are much more directly analogous.

Cameras with advanced facial and other biometric recognition feed back to systems of social scoring, crime prediction, and surveillance of all types. This, combined with central tracking of all online activities including every purchase, conversation, search engine search, etc. combine to give the state a growing ability to form a complete profile on every person in the country. The Uyghur's are, it seems, where the technologies are first implemented and refined, but there is no indication that China will stop there.

If your social score drops too low the Chinese state can, and often does, restrict travel, deny access to basic services, and eventually it will land you in a concentration camp where, as mentioned before, you'll be subjected to, at minimum, brainwashing. This is happening in China today in 2022 where the world sits idly watching downhill skiing on fake snow in Beijing and pretending like everything is just fine.

The technology China is developing is powerful and, of course, not only capable of being used in China. The Coda to The Perfect Police State discusses its spread outside of China to the US and elsewhere. It's not clear where its growth leads, but it's not implausible that if we don't do anything and allow it to expand and grow, that the concept of freedom as we know it today could very well disappear.

DNF as it was due back at the library. Dull but informative (mind you, sensationalizing this would sound hysterical and Cain's obvs not the sort, being more of a plodding journalist-type).