- 320 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About This Book
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 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 abroadâincluding to the United States.
We Have Been Harmonized is a terrifying portrait of life under unprecedented government surveillanceâand 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"
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Contents
- New China, New World: A Preface
- The Word: How Autocrats Hijack Our Language
- The Weapon: How Terror and Law Complement Each Other
- The Pen: How Propaganda Works
- The Net: How the Party Learned to Love the Internet
- The Clean Sheet: Why the People Have to Forget
- The Mandate From Heaven: How the Party Elected an Emperor
- The Dream: How Karl Marx and Confucius Are Being Resurrected, Hand in Hand With the Great Nation
- The Eye: How the Party is Updating Its Rule With Artificial Intelligence
- The New Man: How Big Data and a Social Credit System Are Meant to Turn People into Good Subjects
- The Subject: How Dictatorship Warps Minds
- The Iron House: How a Few Defiant Citizens Are Refuting the Lies
- The Gamble: When Power Stands in Its Own Way
- The Illusion: How Everyone Imagines Their Own China
- The World: How China Exerts Its Influence
- The Future: When All Roads Lead to Beijing
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- About the Author
- Copyright
- About the Publisher