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 unpre-cedented
advances in technology: facial and voice recognition, GPS tracking,
supercomputer databases, intercepted cell phone conver-sations, 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 move-ment. 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 complic-ity 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"
