We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China's Surveillance State

Summary

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"