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 unprecedented advances in
technology: facial and voice recognition, GPS tracking, supercomputer
databases, intercepted cell phone conversations, 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 movement. 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 complicity 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"
