Doskonałe państwo policyjne. Wyprawa w głąb chińskiej inwigilacyjnej dystopii

by Geoffrey Cain, Grzegorz Gajek (Translator)

Wciągające śledztwo, które pokazuje, jak niespokojny region Chin z pomocą globalnych gigantów technologicznych stał się poligonem doświadczalnym dla iście orwellowskiego eksperymentu społecznego i świadkiem narodzin wzorowego państwa policyjnego.

Ujgurscy mieszkańcy Sinciangu – odcięci od prawdy, poddawani ciągłej inwigilacji i otoczeni przez opresyjne siły policyjne – stali się przeklętymi, uciśnionymi wyrzutkami. Społeczne zaufanie jest systematycznie niszczone. Przyjaciele zdradzają się nawzajem, szefowie donoszą na podwładnych, dzieci zwracają się przeciw rodzicom. Witajcie w doskonałym państwie policyjnym.

W oparciu o przerażające wspomnienia młodej kobiety próbującej wyrwać się z kleszczy technologicznej dystopii, własne dziennikarskie śledztwo i relacje świadków Geoffrey Cain odsłania przed czytelnikami potęgę wszechwidzących technogigantów i mrożący krew w żyłach wpływ, jaki mogą wywrzeć na przyszłość nas wszystkich.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, China, History, Technology, Audiobook, Asia

424 pages, Hardcover

First published June 29, 2021

About the author

Geoffrey Cain is an award-winning author and foreign correspondent who sits down with world leaders, tech founders, and dissidents at pivotal moments in history—intimate conversations that grew into his acclaimed books Samsung Rising and The Perfect Police State.

Samsung Rising was longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year, while The Perfect Police State was named NPR’s Book of the Day and received a citation for the Cornelius Ryan Award from the Overseas Press Club.

His books have been called “gripping” (Financial Times), a “thriller” (The Wall Street Journal), “riveting” (The Economist and Forbes), “a crisp narrative” (Publishers Weekly), and “a prescient, alarming work” (Kirkus starred review). He is a regular guest on CNN, NPR, Fox News, and Bloomberg Television.

Author portrait © Beowulf Sheehan

Reviews

[Petra X · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review This review is all over the place, and with the reading notes is a bit repetitive (don't read them!) but this is an important book and I haven't been able to organise this review in any really coherent way.

There is no spy technology that China has that is not used in the US, in the West. Absolutely none. We don't have to go to police stations and hospitals for the authorities, or in our case Amazon, Google, Facebook, our banks etc, to know our blood group, dna, facial recognition, who our friends are, what we read, where we go, what we buy. All of this, with exception of DNA - and now the police are using family dna it hardly matters All of that info is easily available about us. So 'shock horror' look how much China knows about its citizens from their technology, is a bit of a naive reaction.

All the spyware that is on Chinese phones... it would be simplistic to thnk they are making Apples iPhones among others and not including it. From another angle it would be surprising as well, since the facial recognition and many of the phone apps were developed with US companies as partners in China.

There are companies -and universities, including Harvard - who hold a lot of the Chinese information on Uighyer individuals, they are "helping" with the analysis of it. And all the information, they assure us, was freely given. The Uighyers say it is impossible not to 'freely give it' since they will take it anyway and may punish you if you are not 'freely giving it' (they might anyway).

However, everyone talks of the Uighyers as if the Chinese on them for no reason and that they comprise the entirety of the Muslim population of China. There are 26 million Muslims in China, slightly less than half are Uighyers. The others are not persecuted. I feel for the Uighyers of course, as a Jew who has only a small family, the rest murdered in Russia and Germany by men with a similar mindset. But still the question needs to be asked.

The Uighyers became radicalised, and the spread of cell phones and whatsapp were the medium. They did the same as in the West - wanted the women to be veiled, joined Isis (and the Taliban), want a Caliphate, bombings, all that which is familiar to us. This does not excuse the persecution of 12. million people, 1 million imprisoned, for the actions of a few. But it explains it.
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Reading Notes I first read The Chief Witness: escape from China’s modern-day concentration camps when it was published, but I found it impossible to review since the author and her German co-author mystifyingly did not mention the obvious - WWII, Holocaust, Nazis, Germany, and made out that the Uighyers were an entirely peaceful group of people who for no known reason were targetted. This was a total whitewash job to gain sympathy but from a particular point of view. I did wonder if it was the Muslim author or the German ghostwriter who had decided to omit all mention of the extremely obvious parallels with the Jews in Germany.

The second book I read, In the Camps: China's High-Tech Penal Colony, naturally made the connection to Nazi Germany, very much as a technological advance, exclusion and brainwashing as opposed to murder. It also went into why the Uighyers were targetted, but stopped short of actual details, keeping the Uighyers as completely innocent victims who had, thanks to the internet, become more religious in their dress and observance. That review will be revised too.

This book finally goes into great detail about what the Uighyers did and why they were targetted. It doesn't omit mentions of ISIS and the import of fundamentalist attitudes from the West. It also doesn't omit mention of Uighyers wanting a Caliphate, bombs, and riots. Also the defection of some of them to Afghanistan, joining the Taliban, Pakistan, Turkey, Iraq etc.

This is not to say that I agree in any way at all with the Chinese 'treatment' of the 'problem'. I 100% don't. A terrorist or one planning separatist acts is one thing, a whole group of peaceful people of the same ethnic identity who just want to be more religious and left in peace, should be a total non-issue.

But - the book has also made me understand in a way I never have, why the Chinese Communist party rule as they do and that it is only an evil empire because that's the way the West characterise it. It has done plenty of good. 70 years ago rural women often didn't have names, first daughter, second daughter, now they can run companies. I found that hard to write as it was under Mao's time, and I think he was one of the Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot gang, psychopaths who murdered millions. Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962 refers to the 40 million people who needlessly starved to death under Mao.

The involvement of the US, particularly Microsoft and NSA is quite enlightening. But then a previous book Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win presented a pretty full picture of the nature of corruption among the Bush and Trudeau dynasties, Bidens, Pelosi, McConnell, Feinstein, Zuckerberg, Gates, Thiel, Allbright, Condoleeza Rice et al all helped either diplomatically or by being partners, or research and technology for sums of money they just couldn't resist.

I see where the 'free world' is headed. It's actually here, we just don't know it yet. Your phone was made in China, right?

[David Wineberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Xi claims top spot, surpassing Nazis and Orwell

For the Uyghurs of China, just being a Uyghur is a crime. They are targeted, monitored, restricted, interned, brainwashed and destroyed. In Geoffrey Cain’s stomach-churning book The Perfect Police State, the tone is set right up front where readers learn that when a husband is disappeared, the state replaces him with one of their own, sleeping in the wife’s bed with her, ensuring she doesn’t try to change what teachers indoctrinate her children with, and that no criticism of China, the Communist Party or its chairman is ever breathed among them. If you can imagine that. The wife cannot ever complain, or her new man will simply denounce her and she will be disappeared too. The children parrot the propaganda they learned in school, and are taught to report their parents if they try to modify what they learned. (“Love our chairman, Xi Jinping.”) Worse, it is all downhill from there.

It is a story of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which China uses to predict “crimes” before they happen. The result is that nearly every Uyghur is a potential extremist, separatist or terrorist. They are plucked from their lives and interned in concentration camps at the whim of AI. The camps force them to sit through endless lectures on the glories of China, Chairman Xi and the party. They are forced to write lengthy reports on what they learned that day, sing the national anthem and patriotic songs, thank the chairman for all he does and has done, and self-criticize at length. For years on end.

Thanks to constant beatings, they learn to avoid speaking to anyone. They learn to show no facial expressions, ever. They learn they cannot trust anyone at all, especially not their cellmates, that no one can help them, and to give up: hope, optimism or for any kind of satisfaction in life. Their families cannot visit, because their location is secret and high security. If they can “prove” they aren’t terrorists, separatists or extremists to the satisfaction of the AI system, they might be released one day. But they will not recover.

Life on the outside is not much better. Uyghur cities are choking in “security” cameras. Police know every step they take and every move they make. They must scan their IDs everywhere they go, whether it is a market, a store, a gas station or a bus. Or a random police stop. Many are required to install wi-fi cameras in their own livingrooms such that there are no blind spots, and the cameras pick up every word they say. No conversation can be private. Parents must be careful what they say to their children, or whom they call or text, and how they treat the neighborhood spies who knock on their doors daily to inspect the premises for unusual things like, say, too many books. Not going for a habitual walk is reason enough for a knock on the door and a demand for an explanation. All of which will be reported to the police. And input to the AI system.

It’s all about the data. AI requires massive amounts of data to rummage through in order to determine and ran patterns, so every conceivable detail is collected, from photos to videos to fingerprints to blood samples and DNA. Police interviews are repetitive and endless. The AI decides by itself who is about to become a criminal, based on nothing anyone understands. It dictates who the police harass, who they bring in and how their lives will be ruined. Humans can be compassionate, so AI is in charge. Xi’s instruction to “Show no mercy” is not sufficient. Only the AI system can be trusted to implement his orders and his plans.

The AI (SkyNet), including the new, sophisticated facial recognition, is another fine product of American high tech, which works closely with this giant of a customer. A lot of very familiar names make their quarterly numbers selling extraordinarily intrusive systems to China. America has provided China’s state of the art mass genetic profiling system, which further nails not just the Uyghurs, but the Kazakhs and any other minorities polluting the nation. In return, China is now selling so-called City Safety systems in authoritarian countries all over the world, using its own achievements in creating a police state as proof of concept. For America to now criticize the Chinese for this unprecedentedly invasive system would be laughable if it wasn’t so horrifying. After reading The Perfect Police State, readers will understand why the USA has been so weak on helping the Uyghurs.

At work, Uyghurs get ousted from their jobs when imported Han Chinese workers complain about their very presence, just like Jews in Nazi Germany. They cannot travel without numerous permissions and stamps, and every leg of their trip requires scanning of their ID cards. Xinjiang has become Nazi Germany with an AI driver.

The ID cards provide additional data for social credit. This is a system where the good are rewarded with no punishment and the bad are denied what everyone else would consider normal. Inputs include everywhere the card has been scanned, as well as phone and text contents and social media posts and searches. Every bank card transaction, every financial move – everything – goes on the record as evidence somehow against them in their social credit score.

A guard at a store will scan their card and if it comes up “unsafe” or “untrustworthy”, he will deny them entry. In 2017, 17 million plane tickets were denied to Uyghurs that first year of the system. Untrustworthy is at the discretion of the AI system, and once again, no one knows what contributes to that classification. It just is.

As ever, the police are big on beatings, with spiked rubber batons the everyday weapon of choice. They are everywhere and involved in everything, as befits a police state. The state gives them plenty of opportunities, mostly arbitrary, but also using tactics like entrapment.

Cain gives the example of a mobile app appropriately called Zapya. It encourages users to download a free Koran and religious teachings, and to share it all with friends and family. All this data makes them and their networks instant targets for the police and fodder for AI. Uyghurs, who now make up just 2% of the population in their own native Xinjiang, make up 21% of the arrests there. (For years, China has encouraged more pure Han Chinese to move there and they have become the overwhelming majority, sidelining the natives in every aspect of the economy.)

For those who survive the reeducation camps and the slave labor assignments for various American products, there is only misery awaiting them on the outside. They remain fearful, antisocial and isolated. The birthrate among Uyghurs has plummeted, much to the delight of the government, because women can’t have normal social activity or family lives, and don’t especially want to impose it all on another generation of children. It is a kind of self-genocide without resorting to mass executions. Another improvement over old-style Nazism.

Xi Jinping’s landmark program, Belt and Road, is supposedly a project for China to make friends by spending gigantic sums along ancient trade routes. It is also used for forcing client governments to round up and deport Uyghur refugees residing in their countries. Because the police state doesn’t stop at Xinjiang’s borders. They want all Uyghurs back home and under total surveillance. (Prominent examples in the book are Egypt and Turkey.) They will also stoop to spoofing WeChat and WhatsApp accounts, pretending to be neighbors, friends and even the parents of the refugees. They tell them how wonderful things have become, how much they are missed, that it is now safe back home, and then encourage them to come home. If they fall for it, they will of course immediately be disappeared.

Xi has instilled and exploited fear in every corner of society. Uyghurs are just one of “five poisons” in the country. The others are democracy agitators, Taiwan supporters, Tibetans, and Falun Gong faithful. For ease of targeting, they are all suspected of “The Three Evils” - terrorism, separatism, and extremism. The hatred this engenders permeates the entire society, a totally successful implementation of police state purification practices, strongly supported by the majority and ever more nationalistic Han.

Cain has gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure the veracity of his stories. He repeatedly interviewed nearly 200 Uyghur refugees, mostly in Turkey. He was looking for any variations that might mean they were not quite truthful or that were covering up ulterior motives. He rejected a small number of them, and of course protected identities unless they were public figures already. He skillfully weaves one woman’s story in and out through the length of the book, breaking the intense misery of it all with sections on global politics and history. Otherwise, I think it would be unbearable. As it is, the book is powerful, damning and disgusting, a real life implementation of the worst brainwashing dictatorship fiction there is.

This horror of a policy is the pride of Xi Jinping, who leverages it for his own cult status. Far from being a liability, he is intensely proud of it, calling it “absolutely correct”. And “The superiority of our system will be fully demonstrated through a brighter future.” Xi has left both Hitler and Orwell in his dust.

David Wineberg

[Wick Welker · Rating 5 out of 5]

George Orwell eat your heart out.

The Orwellian nightmare is finally fulfilled in the region of Xinjiang in China. Don’t get me wrong, there have been a lot of totalitarian surveillance states that have had a good crack at it (including the US), but the CCP has created the perfect blend of a ruthless AI, state propaganda, incompetent but loyal police and an unquestioning lower class. In all seriousness, The Perfect Police State is a terrifying glimpse into the grave human rights violations that occurring to the Xinjiang among the native Muslim Uyghur.

Through a series of interviews that seemed to have gone through a rigorous vetting process, the author gives first hand accounts of individuals that have spent time in one of the the roughly 260 Xinjiang interment camps where nothing other than abject torture, state indoctrination and dehumanization are currently being inflicted on what the CCP sees as an inferior ethnicity to exploit and replace for the current labor shortages in China. And what’s the excuse the CCP makes to hold these people? Terrorist panic and islamophobia. Sounds familiar…

The concept of the panopticon is introduced wherein prisoner inmate cells are built in a rotunda around a single but hidden guard. In this way, the guard can watch any one prisoner at any time while the prisoners have no idea when they are being observed but know that they can be surveilled at any moment and thus are compelled to regulate their own behavior. This is the surveillance state that the CCP has created in Xinjiang.

Here’s what it looks like: a young Muslim woman from Xinjiang who has been studying for her master in Turkey arrives back in China to visit her mother. They live in a 10 home block where a state designated civilian neighbor makes routine checks on their behavior with daily interviews and questioning. If this state sanctioned neighbor detects anything unusual, she tells the police. One day, the neighbor informs the young women that a security camera will be placed in their living room, no questions asked. They are not allowed to pray or exercise any religious rites whatsoever or will be deemed untrustworthy. The woman is then selected for a mandatory physical where they take her DNA and take pictures of her with various facial expressions for their AI algorithms. Women like her are also forced to take birth control. Simply by virtue of receiving education in Turkey, the woman is then arrested and taken to re-education classes. After she refuses to clean windows, she’s taken to a full blown concentration camp where she is physically and psychologically tortured and indoctrinated with CCP propaganda.

Surveillance is everywhere but the metrics and data are opaque and it’s uncertain how they are being used. American tech companies are complicit and by that virtue, so are American consumers and basically the entire American economy at this point.Good old fashion totalitarianism had the bug of human compassion that could compromise the system but with an AI, the CCP have created a disimpassioned and ruthless algorithm from designed to detect “criminals” and strip them of their humanity. And this is how we get “predictive policing”, the CCPs wording, not mine. And no this is not the screenplay to Minority Report, this is life in Xinjiang.

And this is the genius of the panopticon approach: the surveillance is widespread (4x as many state security cameras as the US), poorly understood and with the false perception of flawless AI targeting. The people of Xinjiang have no idea what is the correct or criminal behavior to trigger the AI for targeting. They don’t know if all the data being collected is even being used. But none of that matters, what does matter is that they self regulate with fear and thus come under state control and take part in the Social Credit System where they are scored on trustworthiness and gain or lose social capital based on the score. The CCP has essentially created a state-sponsored grading system in the Social Credit System where you are rated. If you have low Social Credit, you can be denied housing, computer access, flights and much more. Is it any wonder that the elites of China approve of this system? Whatever insulates and protects the ruling class will have their endorsement, human rights violations be damned.

And with the CCP we have flawless authoritarian rule: scapegoating of a lower class and "inferior" ethnicity who have no stake in existing power. You take these "weakers" and fracture them from the middle class, creating division with fear psychology invoking protection against terrorism. You seize tech resources by international coercion and create a state of "unknowing" where truth becomes contextual and qualified only by the State. With the CCP we now have a new beast: widespread surveillance on par with a science fiction novel that does not have human discrimination and likely written with extreme bias in its algorithms. This is real--this is Xinjiang and it is happening right now.

Read this book right now.

[Barry Welsh · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars. Excellent. Cain's a great writer. Highly recommended

[Venky · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the year 1956, bestselling American science fiction author, Philip K. Dick penned a disturbing dystopia titled “The Minority Report.” The plot has at its nub a perverse system having the capability to ‘predict’ an ensuing crime. Three mutants or ‘precogs’ are plugged into a gigantic machine. Having the capability and foresight to ‘predict’ all crimes before they even happen, these precogs feed information about future crimes to a specialised police department, imaginatively named ‘Precrime.’ Armed with such information, Precrime officers are invested with the requisite powers to arrest and detail all ‘potential’ perpetrators before they can even engage in any mischief. Even the most prescient and pessimistic of human beings would have failed in predicting that this dystopian novel would manifest itself in the most insidious of fashion, in the hands of a totalitarian regime. Using an incredibly sophisticated surveillance system, the People’s Republic of China has succeeded even beyond the wildest of imaginations, to incarcerate, intimidate and detain close to 1.8 million people belonging to the Uyghur minority.

Geoffrey Cain, in his spine chilling work of investigative journalism, illustrates how the People’s Republic of China, in tandem with both domestic and international technology behemoths, has, under Premier Xi Jinping, developed an extremely complicated military-industrial complex where mandatory boarding schools are established to ‘cure’ ‘aberrant’ Uighurs, Kazhaks, and even some rebellious Han Chinese of their ideological diseases. The main objective here being to ‘purge’ the deviants of the ‘triple axis of evil’, namely, terrorism, separatism and extremism. These are arguably the biggest concentration camps since the conclusion of World War II.

Cain’s book is based on first hand testimonies gleaned from Uighur refugees who were meticulously interviewed multiple number of times and over a prolonged period of time, media reports, the Uyghur victim database at shahit.biz, the speeches in state media of Chinese leaders, human rights reports issued by Human Rights Watch, the Uyghur Human Rights Project, the US Congress and US State Department, as well as the work of a small group of researchers analyzing satellite imagery, computer data, and Chinese corporate reports.

Cain informs his readers about an integrated, state of the art, cutting edge system, the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP). Agglomerating assiduously and coercively obtained biometric data with a wealth of other personal information, the IJOP, monitors, shadows and ultimately identifies behaviour that is considered - according to lax, arbitrary and draconian standards – deviant or non-compliant. IJOP is thus a ‘Frankensteinian’ reincarnation of Philip K. Dick’s “precogs.” To add exquisite irony to anguish, the invasive technology platform instituted by Beijing is believe it or not, actually branded “Skynet,” or Tianwang. Skynet, for the uninitiated is a fictional artificial neural network-based artificial general intelligence system that doubles up as the hostile element in the Hollywood franchise, ‘Terminator.’ So much for third party optics!

The oppressed Uighurs dub this ‘panopticon’ kind of surveillance, “The Situation”. An almost genteel and innovative euphemism for repression, “The Situation” is a flawless and unmatched example of a brazen and sustained intrusion of privacy aided and abetted by a constantly embellished technology whose might is too convoluted to fathom even. Consider the following example which puts even the ante diluvian term “Orwellian” to utter shame: “If you’re a woman, you might wake up every morning next to a stranger appointed by the government to replace your partner whom the police “disappeared” to a camp. Every morning before work, this minder will teach your family the state virtues of loyalty, ideological purity, and harmonious relations with the Communist Party. He’ll check on your progress by asking you questions, ensuring you haven’t been “infected” with what the government calls the “viruses of the mind” and the “three evils”: terrorism, separatism, and extremism.”

Uighur women are also required to take a government-mandated birth control pill every noon. The government may also at its own whim and fancy command any woman identified by it to appear at a local clinic before undergoing a process of mandatory sterilization. The irrational and non-linear logic behind this medieval practice being lower birth rates would necessarily lead to higher prosperity.

The entire surveillance mechanism is a well oiled machine lubricated by the sustained contributions of high end technology companies that are beholden to both the diktats and largesse of the Communist Party. Face recognition software and voice recognition software comprise the touchstone behind the success, or failure of any expansive and intrusive surveillance system. Beijing had both the components covered in the form of two high flying companies. Hikvision, a camera manufacturing giant in every sense, took care of the facial recognition software. Hikvision in fact is the world’s biggest manufacturer of surveillance cameras and the entity liberally exports its surveillance devices to likeminded regimes. iFlyTek, supplied ‘twenty five voiceprint systems in the province of Kashgar to capture the unique signatures of a person’s voice in order to help identify and track people’. The ‘Skynet’ loop as Cain informs his readers was closed with the participation of Artificial Intelligence pioneers such as SenseTime and Megvii along with the telecommunications monolith, Huawei.

Based on the information provided by Skynet, the Uighurs are ranked on parameters of ‘trust’. An ‘untrustworthy’ rating can even deprive the unfortunate individual of basic rights such as fuel for his vehicle or groceries for his household. The list of qualifying criteria for being labeled untrustworthy ranges from the absurd to the atrocious. Growing a beard, praying in a mosque five times a day, a sudden abstinence from the habits of drinking and smoking are all considered barometers of a cocooning attribute of extremism. “Starting in 2016, the government, as part of a project euphemistically called the Mosque Rectification Program, would demolish many mosques and damage others. It removed the mosques’ Islamic features, such as minarets, and justified its actions under the claim of structurally unsafe construction. One investigation found that the government destroyed as many as five thousand mosques in Kashgar over a three-month period.”
Forcibly installing surveillance cameras inside the homes of the Uighurs, the State apparatchiks engage in round the clock monitoring of the minority populace. An overseas academic degree gives rise to added suspicion and by natural corollary, exacerbated monitoring and tracking. Under a peculiar system known as ‘baojia’, households in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) are organized into groups of ten homes. The residents of every home are responsible for monitoring each other, keeping track of visitors who came and went etc. A chief is appointed for the designated household units her daily responsibilities include decently knocking on every door each evening and politely enquiring as to whether any family had noticed anything unusual about their neighbors’ activities.

Geoffrey Cain has led a quite interesting and downright dangerous life. In August 2017, the American journalist was theatrically accused of spying by the news media that happened to be aligned with the Cambodian People’s Party. The key protagonist in Cain’s book on the Uighurs is “Maysem.” The name itself is a pseudonym for a young Uyghur woman based in Turkey and whom Cain interviewed fourteen times from October 2018 to February 2021. Maysem felt the full might and brunt of Skynet fall upon her as because of her Turkish educational affiliation, she was banished to a reeducation camp. “Love President Xi Jinping.” “You will go inside,” the guard told her. They shut the doors behind her and Maysem found herself standing alone at the beginning of a long cement hallway. Cameras were pointed at her every few dozen yards. “The walls were covered in paintings with propaganda slogans,” Maysem said. “On one side of the wall, a painting showed Muslim women wearing veils, who seemed sad and repressed. And on the other side of the wall, they had women in high heels and modern clothing, enjoying the city life. On one side, they showed crying children being taught by a Muslim Uyghur teacher. On the other side, they showed happy children being taught by a Han Chinese teacher.”

According to famed anthropologist Adrian Zenz who also happens to be a leading researcher on Xinjiang, by the end of 2017, close to 10% of the entire Uighur population was detained in such concentration camps. From being made to stand under a blistering sun for hours, to being made to occupy claustrophobic enclosures where the lights keep blazing in perpetuity, the inmates are brainwashed into embracing the ideology of the Communist Party. Forced to write seven pages of Chinese hagiography every day, the inmates are also made to chant eulogies of Premier Xi Jinping and indulge in eviscerating self-criticism.

Those who are not shackled to the confines of the concentration camps are put to work in sprawling factories acting as manufacturing hubs for rich global conglomerates. Under a program christened “Xinjiang Aid”, Uighur detainees are transported to labour camps across China. As Cain elucidates, “the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) identified eighty-three companies that benefited from Uyghur workers transferred through labor programs. They included Amazon, Adidas, Calvin Klein, Gap, and Tommy Hilfiger.” Xinjiang also supplies 20 percent of the world’s cotton. Cain alleges that in the year 2018, three regions forcefully transferred at least 570,000 people to engage in some demanding grueling cotton picking by hand. Post this incident going public, in December 2020, the United States banned cotton imports from the bingtuan, accusing it of “slave labor.”

China, under its gargantuan Belt and Road Initiative is also getting many countries “locked” into accepting its dastardly philosophy towards the Uighurs. One of the primary beneficiaries thus far of the BRI ‘largesse’ has been Pakistan. China has pumped in a whopping sum of $46 billion into the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a sprawling crisscross of mega industrial projects intended to rapidly upgrade Pakistan's required infrastructure and strengthen its economy by the construction of modern transportation networks, numerous energy projects, and special economic zones. It does not take a genius to thus decipher where the Pakistani loyalties lie. In a recent television interview the seasoned Australian journalist Jonathan Swan exposed the Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan for the show-horse pony that he was rather than the voracious chest-thumping condemner of Islamophobia as the politician himself has been self-gloating all along. Upon being asked about the plight of the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, Khan made a capital mockery of himself by first confessing that China was one of Pakistan’s greatest friends, before feebly trying to argue that he was only concerned with atrocities and injustices occurring within his own nation and its borders (meaning Kashmir) and when laughably reminded that Xinjiang was in fact near his own border, finally falling flat on his face by meekly mumbling that all discussions between China and Pakistan on such issues would be held only behind ‘closed doors’.

As Bruno Macaes, writes in his compelling book “Belt and Road, A Chinese World Order”, “In December 2017, Sri Lanka formally handed control of Hambantota port to China in exchange for writing down the country’s debt. Under a $1.1 billion deal, Chinese firms now hold a 70 percent stake in the port and a 99 year lease agreement to operate it.” China itself has acknowledged this fact. “In April 2018, Li Ruogu, the former president of the Export-Import Bank of China, argued publicly that most of the countries along the routes of the BRI did not have the money to pay for the projects for which they were involved…..the countries’ average liability and debt rates had reached 35 and 126 percent respectively, far above the globally recognized warning lines.”

Cain also interviews other Uighur intellectual refugees such as the linguist and writer, Abduweli Ayup, Kazakh activist Serikzhan Bilashand defected Uighur spy Yusuf Amet who was forced to work for the Chinese Government. Each and every story is heart rending and gut wrenching and represents an urgent clamour for the world to sit up and take notice. But it is highly likely that even such a fundamental request would fall on deaf years as a rampaging authoritarian state goes about entangling a multitude of countries in its vice like grip of debt diplomacy in the same manner a spider goes about trapping helpless and hapless flies into a dexterously and intricately spun web.

[Rick Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Searing condemnation of the Chinese surveillance tactics against the Uighurs. A fascinating view into what implementation of a police AI system looks like. What a total surveillance state looks like. And while this is an aggressive implementation of such a system I don’t think it’s that far off of what United States police forces have engaged in just in a more clandestine manner. I believe it was the New Orleans police force and their relationship with Planitir in regards to predictive policing is very similar to the relationships described within this book.

I think the actual core of the story is well done and the author has an impressive level of access to those inside the system. But I think that the decisions made and what parts of the story to tell and how to emphasize them were flawed. We spent a lot of time going into details about who messaged who and on what platform and I’m not sure that it’s relevant most of the time. Still a very compelling read.

[Ula Tardigrade · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uyghurs' plights became better known in recent years, as new data and accounts were made public, but there is still too little international awareness. That is why everyone should read this chilling and eye-opening book.

The author describes how China is creating for the first time a real version of the world described in Orwell’s 1984 - not that other states haven’t tried (think North Korea, Cambodia or East Germany) but they lacked sufficient technological sophistication. China took care of this, crafting a perfect surveillance system and using it to repress a whole region.

I have read a few articles about “the Situation” in Xinjiang before but this book still shocked me. Thanks to the combination of the passionate on-the-ground reporting and impeccable research (the author interviewed 168 people for this book, many of them Uyghur refugees), it offers a very detailed and moving description of the terror to which innocent people are subjected because of their ethnicity or faith.

Very interesting were also the parts describing how this sophisticated surveillance system was built - in large part with the help from the US tech industry. As I am interested in the new technologies, I was familiar with some of these issues but only now, seeing them presented in a coherent manner, I understood the whole story.

Thanks to the publisher, Perseus Books, PublicAffairs, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

[Levent Pekcan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hem çok güzel yazılmış, hem de çok güncel bir kitap. Benim de yayınlarımda ara ara dile getirdiğim, "Çin'in dünya ile entegre olamayacağı" iddiasını destekler çok fazla kanıt sunuyor. Yazarın yorum katmayan, çok dikkatli üslubuna özellikle özendim.

Kitap genel olarak iki ana meseleyi ele alıyor, birincisi Çin'in kendi vatandaşlarına yönelik akıl almaz takip uygulamaları, ikincisiyse bu uygulamalara olanak veren teknolojik atılımlar.

Kitapta, genel olarak Çin'in kabul edilmez takip ve baskı mekanizmaları ele alınırken, bu orantısız uygulamalara neden olan meselelere çok da değinilmiyor gibi geldi bana. Diğer yandan, kitabın konusu Türkiye olmamasına rağmen hemen her sayfada Türkiye bahsi geçmesiyse beni çok düşündürdü.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book: The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey into China's Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future (Hardcover)
Author: Geoffrey Cain
Publisher: ‎ Public Affairs (29 June 2021)
Language: ‎ English
File size: ‎ 1634 KB
Format: Kindle
Print length: ‎ 279 pages
Price: 1384 /-

The appalling human rights state of affairs in China cannot ever be overemphasized. 2020 was marked by unsympathetic crackdowns on human rights advocates and people perceived to be nonconformists, as well as the organized suppression of ethnic minorities. The commencement of 2020 saw the start of the COVID-19 eruption in Wuhan, which (officially) killed more than 4,600 people in China.

People demanded autonomy of expression and precision after authorities chastised health professionals for warning about the virus.

At the UN, China was robustly censured and recommendd to permit instant, consequential and unregulated access to Xinjiang. Rigorous constraints on sovereignty of expression continued unabated. Foreign journalists faced incarceration and eviction, on top of systematic delays to and denials of visa renewals. Chinese and other tech firms operating outside China blocked what the government estimated politically susceptible content, extending its censorship standards worldwide.

China enacted its first Civil Code, which received thousands of submissions by the public calling for legalization of same-sex marriage. Hong Kong’s National Security Law led to a crack down on freedom of expression.

This book tells the story of how Xinjiang became the world’s most complicated surveillance nightmare —how the circumstances came to be and what it means for our future as we hold close unparalleled advances in AI, facial recognition, surveillance, and other technologies.

When, in September 2001, the Twin Towers fell in New York it was the one of the most visible terrorist act the modern world had ever seen. More than 6800 miles away, the Chinese government in Beijing perceived this as a vista to bump up its dictatorial rule. One month later, China commenced its own war on terror, and its main focus was extremist groups consisting of Muslim Uyghurs from Xinjiang.

Xinjiang, however, enjoyed comparative peace and affluence from 2001 to 2009, as a result of oil wealth and a construction boom. But China didn’t dole out the fruits of opulence reasonably among Xinjiang’s minorities, who had a historical claim to this land, and settlers from the Han Chinese majority group, who had arrived from the east seeking riches and opportunity.

After nearly a decade of bubbling resentment, Uyghur rioters took to the streets of Xinjiang’s regional capital, Urumqi, in July 2009. The government responded by shutting down the internet and communication lines, and disappearing untold numbers of young Uyghur men. Some were executed, accused of fomenting a violent separatist plot.

From 2009 to 2014, thousands of Uyghur men, having encountered persecution, traveled to Afghanistan and Syria, training and fighting with groups connected to ISIS, hoping to one day return to China and wage a jihad, or “holy war,” against it. These new terrorists launched a campaign of shoot-outs, assassinations, knife attacks, and an attempted airplane hijacking in China.

From 2014 to 2016, China escalated its counterterrorism tactics to unseen levels of brutality.

Despite constitutional provisions and its international commitments and obligations, China continued its unrelenting persecution of human rights defenders (HRDs) and activists. Throughout the year, they were systematically subjected to harassment, intimidation, enforced disappearance and arbitrary and incommunicado detention, as well as lengthy terms of imprisonment.

The absence of an independent judiciary and effective fair trial guarantees compounded such recurrent violations. Many human rights lawyers were denied their right to freedom of movement, as well as to meet and represent defendants and have access to case materials. HRDs and activists were targeted and charged with broadly defined and vaguely worded offences such as “subverting state power”, “inciting subversion of state power” and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”.

Since 2017, an estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and people from other minorities have been accused by the government of harbouring “ideological viruses” and “terrorist thoughts,” and taken away to hundreds of concentration camps.

Many of the camps were repurposed high schools and other buildings, turned into detention centers for torture, brainwashing, and indoctrination. It is the largest internment of ethnic minorities since the Holocaust.

The author observes: “Even if you don’t end up in a camp, daily life is hellish. If you’re a woman, you might wake up every morning next to a stranger appointed by the government to replace your partner whom the police “disappeared” to a camp. Every morning before work, this minder will teach your family the state virtues of loyalty, ideological purity, and harmonious relations with the Communist Party. He’ll check on your progress by asking you questions, ensuring you haven’t been “infected” with what the government calls the “viruses of the mind” and the “three evils”: terrorism, separatism, and extremism.”

Geoffrey Cain has divided this book into twenty chapters:

1. The New Dominion
2. The Panopticon
3. Sky Net Has Found You
4. China Rises
5. Deep Neural Network
6. Do You Think I Am an Automaton?
7. The Great Rejuvenation
8. China’s War on Terror
9. The Three Evils: Terrorism, Extremism, and Separatism
10. People as Data
11. How to Rank Everyone on Their Trustworthiness
12. The All-Seeing Eye
13. Called to a Concentration Camp
14. Mass Internment
15. The Big Brain
16. The Bureaucracy Is Expanding to Meet the Needs of the Expanding Bureaucracy
17. The Prison of the Mind
18. A New Cold War?
19. The Great Rupture
20. You’re Not Safe Anywhere

Severe and across-the-board subjugation of ethnic minorities continued unabated under the pretence of “anti-separatism”, “anti-extremism” and “counter-terrorism” in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (Xinjiang) and the Tibet Autonomous Region (Tibet).

Access to and from Tibet remained highly restricted, particularly for journalists, academics and human rights organizations, making it extremely difficult to investigate and document the human rights situation in the region.

In Xinjiang, since 2017 an estimated one million or more Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim peoples were at random detained without trial and subjected to political programming and forced cultural assimilation in “transformation-through-education” centres.

Documenting the full scope of violations remained impossible due to a lack of publicly available data and restrictions on access to the region. Despite having primarily denied the existence of camps, authorities later described them as “vocational training” centres. Nevertheless, satellite imagery indicated that an increasing number of camps continued to be built throughout the year.

With the onset of totalitarianism, world wars, and genocides in the twentieth century, several of our most prescient writers concluded the world was headed toward a dystopia if we failed to act.

In his 1932 book Brave New World, Aldous Huxley imagined a world government that indoctrinated children into a rigid caste system, giving them a euphoric drug that made them forget the despair of their twenty-sixth century dystopia. 17 years later, in 1949, George Orwell published 1984, imagining a more overt and fascistic government that controlled its people through a panopticon. Other books were even more accurately prophetic of life today.

In the lesser known ‘Stand on Zanzibar’ published in 1968, the American science fiction writer John Brunner predicted with uncanny accuracy that the world would be overpopulated with 7 billion people in 2010, that its inhabitants would read their news in short bursts and respond with real-time takes on a social network akin to Twitter, that China would emerge as the United States’ main rival, and that an African American president named “President Obomi” would sit in the White House.

Those science fiction authors asked the question, “What if?” Their goal was to conceive of a future gone wrong and thus stimulate their readers to think carefully about the decisions immediately in front of them. Decisions that could either propel society toward a dystopian future or help it chart a better course. Xinjiang is the dystopia they imagined.

It’s time to abandon the question of “What if?” We should now ask, “What do we do about it?”

China is culpable of digging itself into the zero-sum dilemma that killed whatever trust people around the world had in it. China persecuted its ciotizens, built a cult of personality around Xi Jinping, passed laws that allowed for sweeping state powers, threatened other countries that raised legitimate concerns over Huawei technology, created an opaque system of poor governance that instigated the spread of Covid-19, and rode a wave of wolf warrior nationalism practiced by diplomats who scolded and threatened other governments for not obeying China’s orders.

As the world listed during the dramatic year of 2020, China, buckling down, completed its project of national revival. Under Xi Jinping, it emerged closer to its historical empire, renewed in feelings of national pride and authoritarian rule. Technology was central to the revival.

As China moved back in time to reclaim its lineage, its new technologies flung it forward into modernity and enabled its prosperity. But the human cost has been terrible. It is indeed a perfect police state.

This book is extremely dark. It’s terrifying at times. And it’s a must-read.

[Romulus · Rating 5 out of 5]

To prawdopodobnie ostatnia książka przeczytana przeze mnie w 2024 r. I najbardziej przerażająca.

Nie było to moje pierwsze zetknięcie z chińskim państwem policyjnym i nowoczesnymi technologiami wykorzystywanymi do jego budowy. Czytałem już pozycje wykazujące, że m.in. nie ma czegoś takiego jak ślepe algorytmy, że każda technologia daje się łatwo wykorzystać w złym celu przez autorytarne państwo. Wszak i te demokratyczne wdrażają różne rozwiązania technologiczne ograniczające wolność pod pozorem troski o bezpieczeństwo. I tak dalej. Piszę o tym skrótowo tylko po to, aby udowodnić, że zasadniczo nie wypadłem sroce spod ogona i temat nie jest mi obcy.

A i tak jestem przejęty po lekturze tej książki. Żeby nie napisać, że przerażony - dla lepszego efektu i bliżej prawdy. To jak Chiny wykorzystują najnowsze technologie, aby inwigilować swoich obywateli jest spełnieniem wszystkich wizji z powieści science fiction. Przyszłość już tu jest i wygląda gorzej niż w wizjach starych, klasycznych pisarzy. I nawet odrobinę nie przesadzam.

Autor opisuje w swojej książce nie tylko narodziny nowoczesnego państwa policyjnego, ale pokazuje na konkretnych przykładach jak ono nowocześnie działa. Chodzi o Ujgurów, muzułmańską mniejszość, która stała się po 2014 r. politycznie podejrzana. A przez to zamieszkiwana przez nich prowincja stała się poligonem doświadczalnym dla nowoczesnej inwigilacji i indoktrynacji.

Książka jest oparta przede wszystkim na świadectwach tych, którzy musieli się z tym systemem mierzyć. Żon, których mężowie znikali a ich miejsce zajmowali przysyłani nadzorcy. Instalowanie w domu kamer i życie pod wieczną obserwacją. System ratingu społecznego jawi się tu jako niemal rozkoszna zabawa w nowoczesne państwo. Zaawansowane systemy rozpoznawania twarzy. Zaawansowane sztuczne inteligencje trenowane tylko w jednym celu - rozpoznawania, śledzenia a nawet predykcji możliwości popełnienia przestępstwa. I tak dalej.

Autor próbuje na koniec dodać czytelnikowi otuchy - mimo całego zaawansowania te wszystkie systemy nie przewidziały ani nie zapobiegły ostatniej pandemii. W ogóle mnie to nie pociesza, biorąc pod uwagę, że na tzw. Zachodzie czekać nas może to samo, jeśli politycy nie będą kontrolowani przez obywateli. Jak to się odbywa widać po notowaniach wszelkiej szurii, od faszystów po „zwykłych” populistów. Mamy przechlapane.

[Cav · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In the region of Xinjiang in western China, people call their dystopia “the Situation.”
Since 2017, an estimated 1.8 million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and people from other primarily Muslim minorities have been accused by the government of harboring “ideological viruses” and “terrorist thoughts,” and taken away to hundreds of concentration camps. Many of the camps were repurposed high schools and other buildings, turned into detention centers for torture, brainwashing, and indoctrination. It is the largest internment of ethnic minorities since the Holocaust..."

The Perfect Police State was an eye-opening investigation into the twisted machinations of the modern Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Author Geoffrey Cain is an investigative journalist and technology writer who reported from Asia and the Middle East for twelve years. He’s contributed to the Economist, Time, the Wall Street Journal, and dozens of other magazines and newspapers.

Geoffrey Cain:


Try to imagine an Orwellian dystopia. Maybe you've read 1984. What a terrible society it depicts. Well, something like that could never play out in the modern-day real world, tho, right? Well, let's continue on, with more of the quote above:

"Even if you don’t end up in a camp, daily life is hellish. If you’re a woman, you might wake up every morning next to a stranger appointed by the government to replace your partner whom the police “disappeared” to a camp. Every morning before work, this minder will teach your family the state virtues of loyalty, ideological purity, and harmonious relations with the
Communist Party. He’ll check on your progress by asking you questions, ensuring you haven’t been “infected” with what the government calls the “viruses of the mind” and the “three evils”: terrorism, separatism, and extremism.
After your morning indoctrination, you may hear a knock on the door. The local neighborhood watch official, appointed by the state to keep an eye on a block of ten homes, will check your house for “irregularities,” such as having more than three children or owning religious books. She may ask why you were late for work yesterday. She’ll probably say that “the neighbors reported you.”
For the crime of forgetting to set the alarm, you must now report to the local police station for an interrogation, where you must explain the irregularity.
After her daily inspection, the neighborhood watch official scans a card against a device hoisted on your door. It indicates she has completed her survey.
Before work, if you drive to the gas station or the grocery store to grab something for dinner, at each place you go you scan your ID card at the entrance, in front of armed guards. After you scan it, a display next to the scanner shows the word “trustworthy,” meaning the government has declared you a good citizen, and you’ll be permitted entry.
A person who receives the notification “untrustworthy” is denied entry, and after a quick check of his statistical data records may face further problems. Maybe the facial recognition cameras caught him praying in a mosque. Or the cameras recorded him buying a six-pack of beer and the artificial intelligence (AI) suspects he has an alcohol problem. He may never know the reason. But everyone knows that any little hiccup can cause the state to lower your trustworthy ranking.
Police officers approach and question him. They double-check his identity on their smartphones with a program called the Integrated Joint Operations Platform, which consists of mass data the government has gathered on every citizen using millions of cameras, court records, and citizen spies, all of it processed by AI.
Under the “predictive policing program,” the AI determines he will commit a crime in the future and recommends sending him to a camp. The police officers concur. They take him away in their police car. He may return at some point after a period of “reeducation,” or he may never be seen again..."

If that doesn't sound truly dystopian, then I'm not sure what does...

Cain gets the book off to a good start, with an energetic intro and preface. He also makes a note on his sources. He interviewed many refugees, and ex-spies. He cross-checked their stories with publically available timelines and archival information.

The events of September 11th, 2001 reverberated around the world. In China, this attack, coupled with the rise of emergent AI tech and algorithmic computational power ushered in a new era of social surveillance by the state; unparalleled in scope.
Their system is actually called the "SKYNET surveillance database." Yes, really. SKYNET; the name of the dystopian computer system central to the Terminator movie franchise storyline. Yikes.



The rest of the book details China's march towards the total digital monitoring of its citizens, and other authoritarian measures; including the long-term interment of political dissidents and opponents. Specifically, Cain's story here focuses on the persecution of China's Uyghur minority population by the Han Chinese majority.

Some more of what is covered here by Cain includes:
• Huawei; its suspicious and nefarious back-door software is covered, as are its ties to the CCP.
• China's "Hundred-Year Marathon." A "century of humiliation" at the hands of the west. The Opium Wars.
• The $1 trillion Belt and Road initiative.
• The October 13th, 2013 Tiananmen Square terror attack.
• China's "Social Credit" system.
• China's "Precrime" surveillance program, reminiscent of the movie "Minority Report."


**********************

The Perfect Police State was an interesting look into the subject. Cain did a decent job telling this story. However, I feel that he just scratched the surface here...
The story of China's authoritarianism and quest for global domination goes well beyond what is covered in the narrow scope of this book. I can recommend a few other books to anyone interested in further reading on this topic.
I would still recommend the book to anyone interested.
3.5 stars.

[Robbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Using every measure available to them, both physical and technological, the Chinese government strive to gain complete control over their citizens. A government far left of communism. Modern day Stalinism.

[Karson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just read the reporting on Xinjiang from ASPI and others (and the Wikipedia page on the Uyghurs for context & "flavor"). Starts on a bad foot with some essentializing quasi-orientalism about "Eurasia" wherein Cain basically just thinks he's really cool for being interested in and traveling around a part of the world most Americans don't think about much, and doesn't much recover from there. Quite a bit of the "journalism"/storytelling in here is just far too hammy to be real. Cain's grasp on the basics of some of his subject matter (especially the bits about AI) is quite poor, which pretty much tanked his credibility for me. I'm reminded emphatically of all the reasons why I (should) avoid pop nonfiction.

[Marcus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I heard the author on a podcast where he described his career as a journalist, often undercover, in countries like North Korea, Russia, Cambodia, and China. I decided to read his book when he said that after his last trip to China in, I believe it was 2019, would be his last because the surveillance state that had arisen there had become too much even for him. This is a guy who doesn’t blink an eye at going to North Korea.

The winter Olympics are going on in Beijing right now and just a couple days ago China used a Uyghur athlete as one of the people chosen to light the Olympic torch. In the context of this book, there’s no other way to interpret that than as the Chinese government’s condescending arrogance showing the world they can do whatever they want with no repercussions. They’re giving apologists for their regime a story to point at to say “see, the condition of the Uyghur’s in China is fine!” when the reality is that in 2017 about 20% of the eleven million Uyghur’s in China were in concentration camps where they were being re-educated. This re-education, at least some of the time, includes physical torture, forced labor, and sterilization as described in detail in The Perfect Police State. There is no evidence that since 2017 that the conditions of the Uyghur’s has changed—quite the contrary in fact. The Uyghur torchbearer from the 2008 Olympics is publicly denouncing China today.

The descriptions of the conditions that the Uyghurs live in in China are frequently compared to George Orwell’s 1984. That may seem cliché since 1984 is usually used the same way people use Hitler—hyperbolically. Except that in China today, the comparisons are much more directly analogous.

Cameras with advanced facial and other biometric recognition feed back to systems of social scoring, crime prediction, and surveillance of all types. This, combined with central tracking of all online activities including every purchase, conversation, search engine search, etc. combine to give the state a growing ability to form a complete profile on every person in the country. The Uyghur’s are, it seems, where the technologies are first implemented and refined, but there is no indication that China will stop there.

If your social score drops too low the Chinese state can, and often does, restrict travel, deny access to basic services, and eventually it will land you in a concentration camp where, as mentioned before, you’ll be subjected to, at minimum, brainwashing. This is happening in China today in 2022 where the world sits idly watching downhill skiing on fake snow in Beijing and pretending like everything is just fine.

The technology China is developing is powerful and, of course, not only capable of being used in China. The Coda to The Perfect Police State discusses its spread outside of China to the US and elsewhere. It’s not clear where its growth leads, but it’s not implausible that if we don’t do anything and allow it to expand and grow, that the concept of freedom as we know it today could very well disappear.

[Trang Nguyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is thrilling and heart-breaking! I cringed at every word. Gas chambers and killing fields are stories of the past but this is a genocide empowered by AI and technology right under your nose. Please read and think carefully about "how your decisions in front of you could propel society towards a dystopian future (like in Xinjiang) or a better course"

[Artur Coelho · Rating 5 out of 5]

É uma coisa ler sobre a forma como a China instrumentaliza as tecnologias digitais para construir uma prisão para as minorias das províncias mais longínquas. Outra, perceber através dos depoimentos daqueles que lá viveram, e conseguiram escapar, a real extensão da repressão exercida pelo estado chinês. 

A visão tecnológica têm o seu quê de fascínio perverso. Perceber a forma como os chineses estão a integrar a internet, video vigilância, reconhecimento facial, captura automatizada de dados de telemóveis e inteligência artificial é fascinante, de um ponto de vista técnico. Já social, é aterrador. Representa o pior pesadelo, a inversão total da promessa libertadora da tecnologia, agora usada como um instrumento repressivo perfeito: invasivos até ao âmago da pessoa individual, ubíquos e inescapáveis. E massivos, usados para condicionar a vida, reprimir, de milhões de pessoas.

Em Xinjiang, província chinesa nas suas fronteiras com a Ásia Central, terrra milenar das etnias uigures e turcomanas, o estado chinês combina tecnologias de ponta com velhos métodos repressivos para efetuar o que, na prática, é um genocídio. A repressão é profunda, desde a restrição total dos direitos mais elementares, possível com policiamento omnipresente, aos campos de reeducação, que servem quer como punição arbitrária de todos aqueles que o regime considera culpados, quer como mais uma forma de intimidação das populações. Tudo isto sustentado por um sistema digital incrivelmente invasivos.

Este livro fala-nos da infraestrutura digital da sociedade prisão chinesa, sublinhando que muitas das empresas envolvidas vão depois vender as tecnologias repressivas que desenvolvem pelo mundo fora, inclusive no ocidente. Toca nos jogos e ambições políticas chinesas, da estrutura do seu regime, da forma como usa todo o tipo de influência, especialmente financeira, para levar as suas intenções avante.

Mas o que nos toca são as histórias, construídas a partir de depoimentos de refugiados uigures que, mesmo longe da sua terra, continuam a sofrer a repressão e ameaças do estado chinês. São histórias dramáticas, de profunda repressão, de sujeição dos indivíduos à vontade de um regime, a qualquer custo. E uma visão da subtileza deste genocídio, que não precisa de pelotões de fuzilamento ou câmaras de gás  para exterminar uma população. O governo chinês é paciente, segue o caminho da esterilização forçada, repressão total e reeducação, para extinguir o indivíduo, aniquilar os sonhos, esmagar a cultura tradicional, arrasar a herança cultural. É um extermínio lento, limpo, discreto, possibilitado pelo uso de tecnologias digitais, e que é pouco falado nos palcos globais. 

[Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley, Perseus Books, and Public Affairs for an advance copy of The Perfect Police State, publication date June 29, 2021.

Did you like 1984? Did you like The Program by Suzanne Young? Any YA dystopian ever? Did you like the show (or short story) Minority Report? Well do I have a book for you!

There’s reprogramming camps! Social credit scores! A Big Brother government that watches your every move! An AI system that not only has facial recognition, but can help decide if you might commit a crime!

Except this is real life and it’s absolutely horrific.

The province of Xinjiang is located in the western most part of China, and is undergoing an ethnic cleanse/genocide, right under the noses of the rest of the world.

Somehow, between 2005 to present, China managed to put cameras every few feet and in the hands of every police officer, and even inside people’s homes. They created an AI that began to, more or less, think for itself while combing through billions of WeChat messages looking for criminal behavior. They invented “social credit” which ranks people on their trustworthiness - to China. They took everyone’s DNA and voiceprint. They built concentration/torture camps thinly veiled as ‘reprogramming camps’ for ‘terrorists’ (ethnic minorities). I could go on and on for paragraphs.

All in all this is a completely horrific if extremely well-researched and written book. Cain weaves Maysem’s tale of living through Xinjiang’s increasing police state, stint in the detention, and narrow escape from China with a lot of information about how China, Xinjiang, and President Xi created the Perfect Police State.

[Lotta Yli-Hukkala · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perusteellinen selvitys Kiinan valvontajärjestelmästä ja etenkin uiguureihin kohdistuvasta valvonnasta ja sorrosta Luin aikaisemmin Katarina Baerin kirjan Kiinan suurin harppaus, joka käsitteli myös Kiinan valvontajärjestelmää mutta yleisemmällä tasolla ja huomattavasti suppeammin. Baerin kirja oli hyvä johdanto aiheeseen, ja se kannattaakin lukea ennen Cainin kirjaa (jos aikoo lukea molemmat).

Olen seurannut jonkin verran uiguurien tilannetta sekä suomalaisista että kansainvälisistä medioista, mutta en ollut aikaisemmin ymmärtänyt heihin kohdistuvan sorron ja valvonnan systemaattisuutta. Cainin toimittajatausta näkyy kirjassa, hän on selvästi perehtynyt aiheeseen syvällisesti ja tietää mistä kirjoittaa. Tärkeä ja hyvin kirjoitettu kirja, joka auttaa ymmärtämään uiguureihin kohdistuvaa sortoa ja Kiinan nykytilannetta.

[Christian · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute must read for anyone uninformed or under informed about arguably the greatest tragedy of the twenty first century - a modern day genocide happening right under our noses

[Leena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kiinan 13 miljoonaisesta uiguurikansasta 0,5-2 miljoonaa on leireillä/vankina. Sinut voidaan hakea koska hyvänsä, jos olet epäilyttävä. Jos luet liikaa kirjoja, jos olet naisena joskus huivi päässä, jos lopetat yhtäkkiä tupakoinnin, jos istut illallisella väärän ihmisen vieressä.

Ainoastaan yksityisasuntoihin voi mennä ilman henkilökorttia+kasvojen skannausta+tekoälyn suorittamaa luotettavuuden arviointia. Kadullakin poliisi skannailee sinua vähän väliä. Kiinan käyttämä teknologia on maailman edistyneintä. Xinjiangissa jokaisessa valotolpassa on kamera, kamerat tunnistavat henkilön jopa 14 km etäisyydeltä. Kameroita on Kiinassa muutama vuosi sitten ollut jo melkein 200 miljoonaa. Leireillä jokaisessa huoneessa on 4-5 kameraa, jotka myös äänittävät puheen.

Somejätit antavat metadatansa Kiinan valtiolle. Jos sinulla on kännykkä, sinulla ei ole mitään mahdollisuutta paeta valtion ympärivuorokautista vakoilua. Monet maat pyrkivät myös palauttamaan sinne paenneet uiguurit tai ainakin kertovat heistä Kiinan viranomaisille. Egypti ja Turkki ainakin toimivat näin.

Passit on takavarikoitu eikä uusia myönnetä. Poliisiasemilla kaikkien on käytävä "terveystarkastuksessa", jossa otetaan dna-näyte, ääninäyte, verikokeet, valokuvat. Naapuri käy luonasi kerran päivässä tarkastamassa, ettei sinulla ole mitään epäilyttävää. Jos miehesi on viety leirille, valtion valvoja voi tulla asumaan luoksesi ja syömään ruokiasi.

Kiina tekee systemaattista kansanmurhaa. Yhä suurempi osa uiguureista on joko vankina tai pakkotyössä. Uskonnon harjoittaminen on tehty täysin mahdottomaksi. Työpaikoilla naiset ottavat e-pillerin klo 12.

Tämä kirja ei ole täydellinen, pelottava se on. Pahimmat dystopiat ovat todellisuutta jossain päin maailmaa.

[Zuzana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Musím sa priznať, že kým sa mi táto kniha dostala do rúk, o čínskom prenasledovaní Ujghurov som vôbec netušila. Autor v knihe pretkáva osobné výpovede Ujghurov, ktorí sú obeťami čínskeho prenasledovania a podarilo sa im ujsť, s prehľadom o tom, ako sa Čína stala svetovým lídrom v digitálnom špehovaní. Osobne sa mi viac páčili (i keď toto vôbec nie je to správne slovo - na obsahu sa mi nepáčilo absolútne nič) osobné príbehy, ktoré sa čítali veľmi ťažko a úplne ma pri nich mrazilo. Zároveň som bola veľmi nahnevená, že až doteraz sa o genocíde Ujghurov veľmi nevedelo (alebo som bola prílš ignorantská?). Našťastie sa táto téma dostáva viac do popredia (v nedávnom období vyšlo na Slovensku a v Česku viacero titulov). Prehľad nástupu cyber špehovania v Číne bol tiež mrazivý a akoby zo sci-fi filmu, no za osobnými výpoveďami jasne zaostával - z toho dôvodu to aj bude len za 3 hviezdičky. Knihu ale ozhodne odporúčam prečítať každému, kto sa aspoň trochu zaujíma o ľudské práva a desí sa toho, čo dokážu moderné technológie - je to ozaj strašné.

[🌗🌜Mateusz🌛🌓 · Rating 5 out of 5]

From the beginning of the infiltration of common people in the Uyghur province of Sinciang with its data-heavy and moral-light tech industry, China has been building a dystopian police state, which Cain presents clearly and emotively through the stories of the first-hand sources. The Uyghur people who managed to flee the despotic fatherland and voice their protest, not always without paying a price for it.

The book is a great read for those who are touching the subject of the Xi Jinping’s Middle Country for the first time, and are especially interested in the tech sides of the global story.

[Heikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

The level on surveillance and persecution of Uygurs in China is scary. I regret getting a Chinese cellphone.

[Weronika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Czytajcie to.
Obszerna bibliografia, oddanie głosu osobom zainteresowanym i zniszczenie nadziei, że kiedykolwiek uda się opuścić panoptykon.

[Nate Hansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eh. I smelled overstatement.

[Neo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perusteellinen reportaasitietokirja Kiinan uiguureihin kohdistuvasta vainosta ja valtiollisesta valvontateknologiasta. Rakenteeltaan osin historiakatsaus, osin yhden henkilön kokemuskertomus, kirjassa on huikea määrä materiaalia. Kiinnostavaa kontrastia on rakennettu asettamalla silminnäkijöiden kertomusten rinnalle virallisia valtiollisia kannanottoja, puoluejohtaja Xi Jinpingin ajatuksia ja esimerkiksi Huawein työntekijöiden kommentteja. Samalla selvitetään, miten valvontakoneiston rakentaminen on mahdollistunut: mukana esimerkiksi huomautuksia siitä, mistä laitteiston vaatimat raaka-aineet on saatu ja kuinka tekoälykehitys on vasta viime vuosina mahdollistanut tarvittavan mittakaavan valvonnan. Kaiken ytimessä on nuoren uiguurinaisen kokemuskertomus Kiinan vallan vastustamisesta, siitä seuranneesta vankeudesta ja traumasta, sekä siitä, millaista kulttuuria systeemillä ollaankaan hävittämässä.

Haluaisin lukea vastaavan teoksen myös joltain muulta kuin yhdysvaltalaiselta tekijältä. Kirjan loppupuolella Yhdysvaltojen maailmanpoliittista roolia ja siten Kiinan näyttäytymistä vaihtoehtona pohditaan hiukan, mutta ei riittävästi. Jäin kaipaamaan myös esimerkiksi kansalaisjärjestöjen vaikuttajien näkökulmia ja mahdollista pohdintaa siitä, kuinka nykyinen "tilanne" (koodinimi kansanmurhalle) kytkeytyy kapitalismiin. Myös kirjan aavistuksen revittelevä ja dystopiakirjallisuudesta lainaava suhde tekoälyyn olisi kaivannut lisää hiomista esimerkiksi tekoälynkehittäjien haastatteluilla.

Kirjan informaationkeräystavat on avattu avoimesti: vaikka lähes jokainen haastateltu esiintyy peitenimellä, heitä uskotaan journalististen ohjeiden mukaisesti. Nämä ihmiset vaarantavat puhumalla itsensä ja rakkaansa.

Tätä lueskellessa seuraan Ylen reportaasia Kiinassa järjestettävistä talviolympialaisista, joissa valvonta on voimakasta ja lehdistönvapaus kyseenalaisissa kantimissa. Saa nähdä, mitä meillä - sillä globaalin maailman jäseninä tämä koskettaa meitä kaikkia - on edessä.

[Milan Buno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Keď spojíte technológie s autoritárskou taktikou, odrazu sa zintenzívni všetko, o čom George Orwell hovoril – newspeak, veľké obrazovky so straníckou propagandou, prísne tresty a koncentračné tábory a neustále sledovanie obyvateľov. V minulosti si vodcovia podmaňovali obyvateľov silou a násilím. Dnes vďaka technológii nepotrebujú typ násilia z minulosti. Dokážu ich ovládať, vymývať im mozgy a zbaviť ich ľudskosti, aby boli úslužní.

Chvíľami som mal pocit, že čítam sci-fi, také neuveriteľné sa mi to zdalo. Párkrát som sa musel vrátiť na začiatok, kde autor popisuje, ako zhromažďoval fakty, rozprával sa s ľuďmi, analyzoval, overoval si všetko aj pri ďalších zdrojoch, aby bol jeho príbeh čo najautentickejší, najvernejší a najpravdivejší.
A práve z toho ma mrazí. Ani vo sne mi nenapadlo, že také čosi existuje. Ako sa z veľkej časti Číny, regiónu Sin-ťiang stala najvyspelejšia sledovacia dystópia na svete. A nie je to len o všadeprítomných kamerách, preverovaní, sledovaní...to je len maličký kúsok celej tej Situácie, ako to nazývajú.

Kniha, po ktorej sa človek zamyslí, čo to všetko znamená pre budúcnosť vo svete bezprecedentného pokroku v oblasti umelej inteligencie, rozoznávania tváre, sledovania a ďalších technológií...
Pretože takéto niečo si neviete predstaviť ani vo sne.

Šokovali ma najmä mnohé detenčné strediská, čiže koncentračné tábory pre Ujgurov. Akési výukové strediská, prevýchovné tábory, v ktorých bolo za posledných 5 rokov vyše 1 milión ľudí. Čínska vláda urobila zo Sin-ťiangu výskumné laboratórium, v ktorom testuje najvyspelejšie nástroje na sledovanie ľudí v dystopickej budúcnosti.

Čína si stanovila za cieľ vymazať identitu, kultúru a dejiny celého národa a úplne asimilovať milióny ľudí. „Burinu ukrytú v lánoch obilia nevyplejete kus po kuse – treba ju postriekať chemikáliami a zlikvidovať ju naraz,“ vyhlásil v januári istý vládny predstaviteľ. „Prevýchova týchto ľudí je ako postrek obilia chemikáliami.“
A tak Čína zriadila dokonalý policajný štát.

V Číne je 170 miliónov kamier, ktoré dokážu niekedy identifikovať ľudí až zo vzdialenosti 15 km.
Vláda hackuje všetky mobily a počítače.
Pri vstupe do škôl a obchodov je povinné používanie občianskych preukazov, ktoré o vás vďaka čipu všetko prezradia.
Verbovanie príbuzných a priateľov, aby na seba vzájomne donášali.
Prideľovanie „sociálneho kreditu“, ktorý odzrkadľuje spoľahlivosť danej osoby...a tým aj prístup k rôznym veciam, od nákupu bežných potravín, cez hypotéku na byt až po možnosť vycestovať.

Autor ukazuje situáciu v Sin-ťiangu cez príbeh Maysem, tiež rozoberá postoj iných krajín a najmä konkrétnych svetových firiem k tamojšej situácii. Napríklad Nike, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple a ďalší.
Ako mnohí zatvárajú oči, alebo sa vyhovárajú, pretože Čína je megatrh a im by ušli zisky...
Autor výstižne ukazuje, ako sa situácia postupne menila, spočiatku nenápadne, plazivo, až bolo neskoro.

V decembri 2017 komunistická strana oznámila spustenie celotýždenného projektu Stávame sa rodinou. Jeho jadrom bolo umiestnenie milióna straníckych kádrov do ujgurských domácností. Vládna propaganda to nazvala „rodinnými stretnutiami“, v skutočnosti jej však išlo o umiestnenie svojich ľudí do domácností Ujgurov a Ujguriek. Preverení stranícki úradníci tak mohli špicľovať Ujgurov, spať v ich posteliach a sedieť za ich stolmi.
Týždňový program Stávame sa rodinou bol experimentom, ktorý prerástol do programu dlhodobého pobytu. Štátni zamestnanci sa do hosťovských domácností vracali každý druhý mesiac a vždy v nej strávili po päť dní. Ak sa niektorá domácnosť odmietla zúčastniť projektu, jej obyvateľov označili za teroristov a odvliekli do koncentračného tábora.
Keď sa z celého sveta ozvali výčitky proti porušovaniu ľudských práv, Čína sa pokúsila vyžehliť si povesť a odvrátiť pozornosť od situácie v Sin-ťiangu.

[Sami Eerola · Rating 5 out of 5]

With very detailed research, contextualization and testimonies, this book present the horrors of Chines surveillance state and the oppression of Uyghurs

The description of the level of surveillance and ideological indoctrination in the Chinese concentration camps surpass what George Orwell predicted in his "1984". China has indeed created the "perfect police state". If everything in this book is true, the Chinese state is a mixture of Stalinism with high tech surveillance technology and AI. Every warning that i have read about invasive surveillance technology has come true in China. Only thing that is not for now possible, is that the AI itself becomes self aware and starts to literally to control China.

[Sara Broad · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Perfect Police State" by Geoffrey Cain is an important look into the increasing awareness of China's efforts to monitor its citizens, particularly the Uyghurs in western China. Cain points out that the Chinese government's presence in all aspects of Chinese life through digital and social monitoring is having disastrous on the autonomy and lives of Chinese citizens, and the Uyghurs in particular. The brave people who stepped forward to provide interviews and information for this book show that China's intent to eliminate Uyghurs reaches far beyond its borders. There is an attempt to harm and eliminate Uyghurs in other countries as well. I do wonder how the publication of a book like "The Perfect Police State" will lead to a further crackdown of what China considers dissidents, which is basically anyone who does not show complete adherence, real or not, to the "values" of the Chinese government. Sadly, as China continues to use financial incentives to integrate itself into many other countries in the world, I wonder what other nations can do to fight back against this extreme oppression and genocide. This is a really valuable read, and I hope this issue continues to be exposed.

[Keval · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the premise of this book. I wanted to know more about what’s been going on in China’s western Xinjiang province beyond what’s reported in the news. And truly, the experiences related here are harrowing. Details on how technology has evolved and shaped what’s happened in Xinjiang was also eye-opening.

On the other hand, the writing left me feeling a bit underwhelmed from time to time. At some points it read like someone upping his cool factor by talking about an “exotic” part of the world. There was the use of an “oops” in italics that I found unnecessary, and somewhat lacking in professionalism and an appreciation of the gravity of the situation. There were also a couple of spelling/grammatical errors, including a factual one: Almaty isn’t the current capital of Kazakhstan. It was until 1997 when Astana (now known as Nur-Sultan) took over.