cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2895644
cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/2895443
Over the past decade and a half, the Chinese techno-authoritarian state has deeply entrenched itself in the day-to-day lives of citizens through the use of highly sophisticated surveillance technology. Two of the world’s largest manufacturers of video surveillance equipment, Hikvision and Dahua, have revolutionized the industry and exported their products to hundreds of countries worldwide.
Chinese citizens are required to use their ID when engaging in various activities, from signing up for WeChat, the ubiquitous messaging app, to using super-apps like Alipay or WeChat Pay for tasks such as public transport, online shopping, and booking movie tickets.
This extensive network allows the government to track citizens’ everyday activities and create detailed profiles, effectively establishing a Panopticon state of censorship and repression.
The most prominent feature of China’s surveillance state is its extensive network of facial recognition cameras, which are nearly ubiquitous. The Chinese government launched a programme known as Skynet in 2005, which mandated the installation of millions of cameras throughout the nation.
This initiative was further expanded in 2015 with the introduction of SharpEyes, aiming for complete video coverage of ‘key public areas’ by 2020.
The government, in collaboration with camera manufacturers such as Hikvision and Dahua, framed this as a progressive step towards developing ‘smart cities’ that would enhance disaster response, traffic management, and crime detection.
However, the technology has been predominantly employed for repressive purposes, reinforcing compliance with the Communist Party of China.
[…]
Although many of the ‘threats’ identified by this system may turn out to be false alarms, the omnipresent vigilance of the state ensures that even the slightest dissent from citizens is swiftly suppressed.
[…]
China has become the first known instance of a government employing artificial intelligence for racial profiling, a practice referred to as ‘automated racism’, with its extensive facial recognition technologies specifically identifying and monitoring minority groups, particularly Uyghur Muslims, who have been subjected to numerous human rights violations by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
[This inlcudes] mass detentions, forced labour, religious oppression, political indoctrination, forced sterilisation and abortion, as well as sexual assault.
In Xinjiang, an extreme form of mass surveillance has transformed the province into a battleground, with military-grade cyber systems imposed on the civilian population, while the significant investment in policing and suppressing Uyghur Muslims has established Xinjiang as a testing ground for highly intrusive surveillance technologies that may be adopted by other authoritarian regimes, and the Chinese government has been known to collect DNA samples from Uyghur Muslims residing in Xinjiang, a move that has drawn widespread international condemnation for its unethical application of science and technology.
[…]
The Chinese government has adeptly formulated legislation that unites citizens and the state against private enterprises. Laws such as the Personal Information Protection Law and the Data Security Law, both enacted in 2021, impose stringent penalties on companies that fail to secure user consent for data collection, effectively diverting scrutiny away from the state’s own transgressions.
[…]
This is a pretty good overview of the human rights problems associated with the Chinese technology industry. It’s why I decided to stop purchasing products designed by Chinese companies a few years ago, after watching a Frontline documentary about it. It just felt wrong to be putting money into a sector of their industry that I know is being used to oppress billions of people. That’s not to say non-Chinese technology companies don’t have their own significant problems but there is a very obvious and direct link between the Chinese state and the Chinese private sector that doesn’t exist elsewhere (at least not on this scale).
Thanks for this.
Maybe you know Total Trust, a documentary.
Total Trust is an eye-opening and deeply disturbing story of surveillance technology, abuse of power and (self-)censorship that confronts us with what can happen when our privacy is ignored. Through the haunting stories of people in China who have been monitored, intimidated and even tortured, the film tells of the dangers of technology in the hands of unbridled power. Taking China as a mirror, Total Trust sounds an alarm about the increasing use of surveillance tools around the world – even by democratic governments like those in Europe. If this is the present, what is our future?
If you speak German, you can watch it on Arte TV, but it is only available 3 more days.
I haven’t heard of that one but I’ll definitely watch it, thanks for the recommendation! In my city the small Uyghur community has been quite vocal about the treatment of their friends and family back home, many of whom they haven’t been able to contact for years due to the crackdowns. In particular, there was a family who ran a restaurant I used to eat at semi-regularly whose story received worldwide media attention. I have felt quite strongly about this issue since then.
That is certainly not wrong. However, I believe that it’s not just the Chinese but that the US government (and other states around the world) has very far-reaching access to its citizens’ data as well. Among other things, the Patriot Act makes it very easy to demand user data from companies without appropriate checks and balances, if the NSA is not already aware anyway. Without somewhat decent legal regulations such as those that exist in the EU for example, citizens have to trust that the state will not abuse this largely unregulated power. With regard to the question of who will form the next US government, I see a significant problem in this context: I think that Trump’s right wing GOP will use this power against their political opponents and also, as a precaution, against ordinary citizens. I don’t think they would shy away from setting up a surveillance state based on the Chinese model - the conditions for this are certainly met in the current legal situation.
I wonder what the apologists from .ml have to say…
I guess they can’t say much in this case. Maybe a bit whataboutism (chat control? Google does the same?), but you can’t defend this imo.
You’re delusional, they’ll defend it by saying ‘the Chinese Communist Party has lifted blah blah blah people out of poverty!!!’ notwithstanding it’s the major reason they were in poverty, Taiwan had become one of the richest and freest countries decades earlier, and they didn’t murder 50m+ of their own citizens for lulz.
So long as the CCP isn’t murdering them at that exact moment, they’re 100% on board because their whole life is built around everything the west doing must be evil (closer to 40/60 imho, but that beats the 80/20 of the ccp).
Yup, Taiwan and Hong Kong are fantastic examples of what can happen when you don’t have a dictator in charge.
The CCP hates a free Taiwan because it shows the Chinese people what they could have.
So nobody will question the lack of sources to support all this claims?
As an addition:
-
In 2015, two years after kicking off its massive Belt and Road initiative, China launched its “Digital Silk Road” project to expand access to digital infrastructure such as submarine cables, satellites, 5G connectivity, etc. In a report published this year, the UK-based human rights group ‘Article 19’ argues that the project is about more than just expanding access to Chinese technology, but rather to export its brand of digital authoritarianism across the word. Here is a brief article about it where you can also download the 80-page report (April 2024): China: The rise of digital repression in the Indo-Pacific – (Archived link)
-
There is also an interesting first-hand research about how Chinese people cope with constant surveillance in their country by Canadian researcher Professor Ariane Ollier-Malaterre (March 2024): Digital surveillance is omnipresent in China. Here’s how citizens are coping (in French: La surveillance numérique est omniprésente en Chine. Voici comment les citoyens y font face)
Does anyone get reminded of Nineteen Eighty-Four? No? Just me? Ok…
1984 is already a reality - in every country of the word, especially the US. Apple’s famous Superbowl commercial from the same year, which suggested that data privacy (…) was important with regard to their strongest competitor at the time (IBM), does nothing to change this. On the contrary - none of this was even halfway true even back then. I really don’t get why people think this is just an issue in China. It is an issue all over the world. For years and years.
Sure, but there’s a pretty big difference in scope. In the US, I have Constitutional protections concerning use of that data, as well as a lot of legal options to limit it (VPN, anonymous accounts, etc). In China, those don’t exist, and instead surveillance is part of everyday life. You’ll think about it whenever you visit a new site, just to double check that it won’t be considered problematic by the state. That just doesn’t exist in the US.
That said, things aren’t good in the US and we should expect better. But it is workable if you’re careful, and it can probably be reversed with enough public outcry.
So, basically the description of dystopia as seen in 1984 is applied differently depending on which country you live in, but it still technically exists everywhere. And that’s just depressing.
