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We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China's Surveillance State
One of the world’s most respected investigative reporters reveals how George Orwell’s chilling vision of authoritarianism in 1984 has come true in modern China’s high-tech surveillance state.
They are always watching.
For nearly twenty years, politicians from President Bill Clinton to tech gurus including Google’s Eric Schmidt proclaimed that the internet could not be censored by any government, including China. As recently as 2013, Tim Berners-Lee, often credited as the inventor of the World Wide Web, declared that “piece by piece, website by website, China’s ‘great firewall’ would meet the same fate as the Berlin Wall.” Yet these predictions have been proved wrong. In We Have Been Harmonized, award-winning journalist Kai Strittmatter reveals how the internet and high tech have transformed the power of Chinese authoritarians, allowing them to create the most horrifying surveillance state in history.
Advances in technology—facial recognition, GPS tracking, supercomputer databases, mobile phones, high-resolution security cameras—make it nearly impossible for a Chinese citizen to hide anything from authorities. Text messages and emails are instantly stripped of “problematic” words. The year 1989—when the world witnessed the student protests and tragic massacre at Tiananmen Square—has been banished from search results. Cameras scan for “appropriate” facial expressions as they track individuals’ movements. Each citizen is given a score for good behavior. Those who lose points can be banned from traveling, have their internet speed reduced, or even have their toilet paper limited.
All of this has happened with the help of Chinese tech companies, as well as the complicity of Western governments and corporations eager to gain access to China’s huge market. While these companies export their technology to authoritarian states around the globe, they are also reshaping American lives via app, smart phones, and computing. Strittmatter’s book is a terrifying portrait of an Orwellian nightmare unlike anything we’ve ever witnessed, and a dire warning about what could happen anywhere.
345 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 15, 2018
507 people are currently reading
9005 people want to read
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May 1, 2023
A passionate, urgent and at times terrifying book on the future China is building, frontally assaulting concepts as universal human rights and pluralism in favor of tight, all encompassing control by the CCP
One Chinese judge put it this way: where there are conflicts of interest, the party nature of a CCP member should always outweigh his human nature
A book that is both easily readable and hard to read in its content. Through clear themes and areas that the CCP asserts its power over, from its own people, historical narratives, foreign countries and businesses, the image that emerges is chilling.
More thoughts to follow but excellent non-fiction that calls into doubt the complacency we might have as the West about the future being the same as we know it post World War II.
One Chinese judge put it this way: where there are conflicts of interest, the party nature of a CCP member should always outweigh his human nature
A book that is both easily readable and hard to read in its content. Through clear themes and areas that the CCP asserts its power over, from its own people, historical narratives, foreign countries and businesses, the image that emerges is chilling.
More thoughts to follow but excellent non-fiction that calls into doubt the complacency we might have as the West about the future being the same as we know it post World War II.
June 27, 2022
Illuminating.... and terrifying. If you're curious about China under Xi Jinping's regime, I highly recommend both We Have Been Harmonized and Made in China: A Prisoner, an SOS Letter, and the Hidden Cost of America's Cheap Goods.
This deserves a more in-depth review but Sars-Cov2 finally caught up with me (the irony of reading a book about China when it did is not lost on me, given that it originated there and was covered up and allowed to spread due to Chinese politics -though not the fault of Chinese citizens) and I'm not up to writing. Suffice to say, this book is well worth reading.
This deserves a more in-depth review but Sars-Cov2 finally caught up with me (the irony of reading a book about China when it did is not lost on me, given that it originated there and was covered up and allowed to spread due to Chinese politics -though not the fault of Chinese citizens) and I'm not up to writing. Suffice to say, this book is well worth reading.
April 21, 2020
Chcecie zajrzeć w przyszłość polityki? To koniecznie sięgnijcie po tę książkę Kaia Strittmattera. Nie jest to żadna książka z gatunku science fiction, nie jest to projekcja naukowa, czy próba odgadnięcia tego, jak za jakiś czas będzie działał świat. Wszystko, co opisuje autor, już się dzieje w Chinach i, jak zauważa sam Strittmatter, może zdarzyć się gdzie indziej.
Bo chociaż w książce „Chiny 5.0. Jak powstaje cyfrowa dyktatura” czytamy głównie o państwie środka, czyli kraju, w którym panuje dyktat komunistycznej partii, to przecież musimy pamiętać o innych państwach, także zachodnich demokracji, które osuwają się w kierunku różnego rodzaju populistów i autokratów. Strittmatter we wstępie do swojej książki pisze o Donaldzie Trumpie, my moglibyśmy przywołać z Europejskiego podwórka choćby Orbana czy Kaczyńskiego.
Ale nie jest te tak, że tylko skrajnie prawicowi populiści mają zapędy, by ograniczać wolność jednostek. Nawet tzw. liberalne partie robią to sprawnie, co niedawno przypomniał Jarosław Lipszyc w ciekawym wywiadzie dla Noizz: „W Polsce to liberalna Platforma Obywatelska zaczęła ochoczo wdrażać różne narzędzia elektronicznego nadzoru. To oni zlikwidowali anonimowe karty SIM na telefon, a nie obecna władza. Dzięki temu tworzenie różnych narzędzi kontroli społecznej jest dzisiaj dużo łatwiejsze, bo wszyscy mamy telefony, które da się jednoznacznie przypisać do konkretnej osoby. Mówię o tym, żeby pokazać, że te zmiany nie wynikają z programu politycznego tej czy innej partii. One wynikają z potrzeb klasy politycznej w ogóle” – mówi Lipszyc, a jego słowa wyraźnie pokazują, jak ważna dla zrozumienia nowoczesnej polityki jest książka Strittmattera.
Niemiecki dziennikarz pisze o Chinach, bo na przykładzie działalności chińskich władz chyba najwyraźniej widać zagrożenia, jakie niesie ze sobą technologia, a właściwie jej użycie przez władzę. Cenzura internetu dla chińskich obywateli i represje wobec tych, którzy próbują przebić się przez sito cenzorów, to dopiero wierzchołek góry lodowej.
W Chinach dzieją się rzeczy, które przywodzą na myśl dystopijne filmy science fiction. Mnie przy czytaniu książki cały czas przypomniał się serial „Black mirror”.
Nie chcę tu zdradzać zbyt wiele z treści, zwłaszcza tego, co autor pisze o technologiach i ich wykorzystaniu. Powiem więc o czym innym.
„Chiny 5.0” to także książka, która przypomina, czym jest dyktatura w ogóle - o tym na jakim rusztowaniu jest zbudowana. W pierwszej części książki autor nie pisze o technologiach, ale skupia się na przedstawieniu specyfiki chińskiego ustroju i dyktatury partii. Rysuje także pokrótce historię ostatnich 30 lat w chińskiej polityce wewnętrznej, pokazując ciekawą ewolucję – w ostatnich latach Xi Jinping, przewodniczący Chińskiej Republiki Ludowej, staje się coraz bardziej doktrynalny, co sprawia, że komunizm w Chinach staje się bardziej konserwatywny, przy czym do konserwacji, władza używa coraz nowocześniejszych i bardziej zaawansowanych rozwiązań technologicznych.
To wszystko, o czym pisze Strittmatter, jest bardzo ciekawe i ważne. Myślę, że każdy, kto w Polsce interesuje się polityką, powinien przeczytać tę książkę. Problem w tym, że nie wszyscy będą chcieli lub nie wszyscy będą w stanie ją przeczytać, a to dlatego, że „Chiny 5.0” to napisany niezbyt przystępnym językiem esej.
Dużo w nim szczegółowych informacji, a w połączeniu z mnogością wątków ta książka jest po prostu trudna w odbiorze. Jej forma wielu czytelników i wiele czytelniczek po prostu zniechęci. A szkoda. Rozumiem chęć bycia jak najbardziej rzetelnym, ale książka, która ma dotrzeć do jak najszerszego grona odbiorców, nie może przypominać analizy dla „Polityka Insight”. Niestety styl Strittmattera to największy minus tej książki. Minus, który długą linią ciągnie się przez wszystkie strony
Mimo to polecam tę książkę. Warto się przemęczyć. Treść sporo wynagradza.
Bo chociaż w książce „Chiny 5.0. Jak powstaje cyfrowa dyktatura” czytamy głównie o państwie środka, czyli kraju, w którym panuje dyktat komunistycznej partii, to przecież musimy pamiętać o innych państwach, także zachodnich demokracji, które osuwają się w kierunku różnego rodzaju populistów i autokratów. Strittmatter we wstępie do swojej książki pisze o Donaldzie Trumpie, my moglibyśmy przywołać z Europejskiego podwórka choćby Orbana czy Kaczyńskiego.
Ale nie jest te tak, że tylko skrajnie prawicowi populiści mają zapędy, by ograniczać wolność jednostek. Nawet tzw. liberalne partie robią to sprawnie, co niedawno przypomniał Jarosław Lipszyc w ciekawym wywiadzie dla Noizz: „W Polsce to liberalna Platforma Obywatelska zaczęła ochoczo wdrażać różne narzędzia elektronicznego nadzoru. To oni zlikwidowali anonimowe karty SIM na telefon, a nie obecna władza. Dzięki temu tworzenie różnych narzędzi kontroli społecznej jest dzisiaj dużo łatwiejsze, bo wszyscy mamy telefony, które da się jednoznacznie przypisać do konkretnej osoby. Mówię o tym, żeby pokazać, że te zmiany nie wynikają z programu politycznego tej czy innej partii. One wynikają z potrzeb klasy politycznej w ogóle” – mówi Lipszyc, a jego słowa wyraźnie pokazują, jak ważna dla zrozumienia nowoczesnej polityki jest książka Strittmattera.
Niemiecki dziennikarz pisze o Chinach, bo na przykładzie działalności chińskich władz chyba najwyraźniej widać zagrożenia, jakie niesie ze sobą technologia, a właściwie jej użycie przez władzę. Cenzura internetu dla chińskich obywateli i represje wobec tych, którzy próbują przebić się przez sito cenzorów, to dopiero wierzchołek góry lodowej.
W Chinach dzieją się rzeczy, które przywodzą na myśl dystopijne filmy science fiction. Mnie przy czytaniu książki cały czas przypomniał się serial „Black mirror”.
Nie chcę tu zdradzać zbyt wiele z treści, zwłaszcza tego, co autor pisze o technologiach i ich wykorzystaniu. Powiem więc o czym innym.
„Chiny 5.0” to także książka, która przypomina, czym jest dyktatura w ogóle - o tym na jakim rusztowaniu jest zbudowana. W pierwszej części książki autor nie pisze o technologiach, ale skupia się na przedstawieniu specyfiki chińskiego ustroju i dyktatury partii. Rysuje także pokrótce historię ostatnich 30 lat w chińskiej polityce wewnętrznej, pokazując ciekawą ewolucję – w ostatnich latach Xi Jinping, przewodniczący Chińskiej Republiki Ludowej, staje się coraz bardziej doktrynalny, co sprawia, że komunizm w Chinach staje się bardziej konserwatywny, przy czym do konserwacji, władza używa coraz nowocześniejszych i bardziej zaawansowanych rozwiązań technologicznych.
To wszystko, o czym pisze Strittmatter, jest bardzo ciekawe i ważne. Myślę, że każdy, kto w Polsce interesuje się polityką, powinien przeczytać tę książkę. Problem w tym, że nie wszyscy będą chcieli lub nie wszyscy będą w stanie ją przeczytać, a to dlatego, że „Chiny 5.0” to napisany niezbyt przystępnym językiem esej.
Dużo w nim szczegółowych informacji, a w połączeniu z mnogością wątków ta książka jest po prostu trudna w odbiorze. Jej forma wielu czytelników i wiele czytelniczek po prostu zniechęci. A szkoda. Rozumiem chęć bycia jak najbardziej rzetelnym, ale książka, która ma dotrzeć do jak najszerszego grona odbiorców, nie może przypominać analizy dla „Polityka Insight”. Niestety styl Strittmattera to największy minus tej książki. Minus, który długą linią ciągnie się przez wszystkie strony
Mimo to polecam tę książkę. Warto się przemęczyć. Treść sporo wynagradza.
June 19, 2022
This was a fascinating book about the depths to which China monitors and controls the populace. It was both mind blowing and terrifying. China not only uses surveillance but also appears to be successfully controlling how people think. The government has cracked down on free speech, completely controls the media, the universities, social media platforms, and all the other ways that people gather and receive information. It controls everything the population sees and hears. The psychological manipulation is stunning. What's worse is that they are using very advanced techniques and technologies to monitor and manipulate. They are using algorithms to monitor how people research. Bots scanning the internet for how and what people search for example, analyze the patterns and the government has arrested and imprisoned people for ideas that the government deems troublesome. Corporations that don't go along, no problem. China has blocked Facebook, Google and Twitter. They have their own social media and search engines completely government controlled. The people no longer know what the truth is, so they are completely cowed and numb. These authoritarian tactics should serve as a cautionary tale for the rest of the civilized democratic world (which we are ignoring or worse). Brexit and January 6th are not normal. Free speech in Hong Kong is gone. It's not really a stretch of the imagination to understand the psychological manipulation that is happening worldwide. China is a laboratory and basically the first step. The internet is a very effective authoritarian tool. Xi is the first Chinese leader to use technology so ruthlessly and effectively. The ease and pace at which it has happened is stunning. And they are exporting the methods and ideology to other authoritarian countries. By the way, y'all can have Tik Tok. I'm not ever going to touch it…
4+ illuminating but futile stars
Listened to the audiobook. Matthew Waterson narrated effectively and kept my interest throughout.
4+ illuminating but futile stars
Listened to the audiobook. Matthew Waterson narrated effectively and kept my interest throughout.
August 8, 2019
Brilliant. A terrifying, urgent, well-written polemic. China is hatching into the next stage of its evolution: as the world’s most creative AI superpower, where data privacy is non-existent and the whole country is a dynamic test lab for unheard-of surveillance tech.
China’s technology has already overtaken the West’s. But as the author points out, at the core of the Chinese state, at the heart of its modernity and breakneck growth, lies something very ancient: untrammelled, chaotic despotism. Fear is what polices the internet, phone conversations, and public spaces. Whether Big Brother is watching or not, ordinary Chinese are internalising the surveillance, censoring themselves, out of fear.
The Communist Party once again dominates every facet of daily life with a force not seen since the Cultural Revolution. In true Party doublethink, ‘Democracy!’, ‘The Rule of Law!’ are slogans used to describe their exact opposites in reality – dictatorship and arbitrary terror. In fact these very concepts are made so self-contradictory, confusing and empty that young Chinese may be inoculated against the appeal of genuine democracy when they encounter it elsewhere in the world.
Europe has been half asleep to this development and can’t afford to ignore it. With near-limitless resources and burning sense of victimhood, it is clear who China defines itself against: the West and its values, at the very time when the EU is splintering and electing those who divide it.
Ultimately, the author hints, Xi Jinping's airless regime may be self defeating. To sustain such dynamic prosperity and China's lead in new technology it needs to free its best minds for creativity, innovation, experimentation, unorthodox thinking – the very impulses and energies the regime works so hard to stifle and crush.
China’s technology has already overtaken the West’s. But as the author points out, at the core of the Chinese state, at the heart of its modernity and breakneck growth, lies something very ancient: untrammelled, chaotic despotism. Fear is what polices the internet, phone conversations, and public spaces. Whether Big Brother is watching or not, ordinary Chinese are internalising the surveillance, censoring themselves, out of fear.
The Communist Party once again dominates every facet of daily life with a force not seen since the Cultural Revolution. In true Party doublethink, ‘Democracy!’, ‘The Rule of Law!’ are slogans used to describe their exact opposites in reality – dictatorship and arbitrary terror. In fact these very concepts are made so self-contradictory, confusing and empty that young Chinese may be inoculated against the appeal of genuine democracy when they encounter it elsewhere in the world.
Europe has been half asleep to this development and can’t afford to ignore it. With near-limitless resources and burning sense of victimhood, it is clear who China defines itself against: the West and its values, at the very time when the EU is splintering and electing those who divide it.
Ultimately, the author hints, Xi Jinping's airless regime may be self defeating. To sustain such dynamic prosperity and China's lead in new technology it needs to free its best minds for creativity, innovation, experimentation, unorthodox thinking – the very impulses and energies the regime works so hard to stifle and crush.
January 2, 2024
almost 4 ☆
In We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China's Surveillance State, German journalist Kai Strittmatter warned the West of the increasing geopolitical threat coming from China.
The author asserted that China is run by a dictator. Xi Jinping has had a stupendous rise in power since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) elevated him to national prominence in 2012. Xi had immediately commenced a prolonged "anti-corruption cleanup" which not only removed competitors and detractors from positions of power but relieved them of their wealth and freedom as well. This campaign's ability to instill fear ensured that the remaining members would fall in line. Such that, Xi successfully changed China's Constitution regarding term limits so that he can serve as the President of China for the rest of his life.
Xi's Party has also turned that coercive power of the stick (no carrots within China) and harnessed the power of technology (from the internet to artificial intelligence to facial recognition software) to keep the masses under the Party's thumb. They've shoved memories of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre under the proverbial rug by silencing those who would question the government or by squelching any reports before they could be published in China. The Party has taken over the media with its vigorous censorship efforts. And those who loudly question get labeled as "dissidents" which subject them to public shaming and / or imprisonment.
In the past several decades, China took some steps toward capitalism and market economies raising hopes in the West of a similar change in its governing structure. But under Xi's hand, a more open economy did not lead to concurrent political liberalization. While there is a growing middle class in China, immense wealth has also been amassed and consolidated among those high up in the CCP's echelon. Xi's solution to dealing with the growing divide between rich and poor is to unite the country via nationalism by demonizing the West. Xi's China is positioning itself to take a more prominent role in the global stage. Part of this strategy has been the Belt and Road Initiative (the "new" Silk Road), in which China has poured millions into infrastructure projects throughout Asia, Africa, and even parts of Europe.
Most of these techniques and topics weren't new to me. I had listened to the audiobook. Perhaps the author's worried tone manifested too strongly via that medium because I wished that he had dialed down the rhetoric a notch. I also would have preferred tighter organization in his writing style and an index would have been helpful.
Nevertheless, I concur with his thesis. The clues have been visible for all to see. Even for someone who is outside the realm of foreign policy, the news regarding the Hong Kong democracy protests, the human rights violations of the Uighurs, and Covid-19 lockdown measures support the author's assertion of the autocracy of Xi. My own brief visit to China in summer 2019 was eye-opening. Surveillance cameras were ubiquitous with not one but several camera lenses mounted on each street pole. When my group was at Tiananmen Square, my guide would not answer any questions about 1989 and suggested that we Google the topic once we returned home. When my hotel TV aired news about the Hong Kong protests, within 10 seconds all the English news channels went silent and presented a blank screen. The compilation of the author's evidence in this book paints an utterly chilling image of China for its citizens and for the inevitable future global power clashes. What was concerning to me was China's recent success in influencing the West through its deployment of funds. Both Greece and Hungary bear closer scrutiny in the future.
In We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China's Surveillance State, German journalist Kai Strittmatter warned the West of the increasing geopolitical threat coming from China.
This is the deal the Communist Party has with the people: you submit to our dictatorship, and we provide you with prosperity, protection, and security in return. It is China's unwritten social contract.
The author asserted that China is run by a dictator. Xi Jinping has had a stupendous rise in power since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) elevated him to national prominence in 2012. Xi had immediately commenced a prolonged "anti-corruption cleanup" which not only removed competitors and detractors from positions of power but relieved them of their wealth and freedom as well. This campaign's ability to instill fear ensured that the remaining members would fall in line. Such that, Xi successfully changed China's Constitution regarding term limits so that he can serve as the President of China for the rest of his life.
Harmony is when ordinary people don't make a fuss.
... an honest man is a stupid man.
Xi's Party has also turned that coercive power of the stick (no carrots within China) and harnessed the power of technology (from the internet to artificial intelligence to facial recognition software) to keep the masses under the Party's thumb. They've shoved memories of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre under the proverbial rug by silencing those who would question the government or by squelching any reports before they could be published in China. The Party has taken over the media with its vigorous censorship efforts. And those who loudly question get labeled as "dissidents" which subject them to public shaming and / or imprisonment.
Hannah Arendt, who studied totalitarian regimes, said as much in an interview in 1974: “If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.” But a population that no longer believes anything is robbed of its ability to think and to judge, and ultimately of its capacity to act. As Arendt says, “with such a people, you can then do what you please.” These are the ideal subjects—or the ideal opponents.
In the past several decades, China took some steps toward capitalism and market economies raising hopes in the West of a similar change in its governing structure. But under Xi's hand, a more open economy did not lead to concurrent political liberalization. While there is a growing middle class in China, immense wealth has also been amassed and consolidated among those high up in the CCP's echelon. Xi's solution to dealing with the growing divide between rich and poor is to unite the country via nationalism by demonizing the West. Xi's China is positioning itself to take a more prominent role in the global stage. Part of this strategy has been the Belt and Road Initiative (the "new" Silk Road), in which China has poured millions into infrastructure projects throughout Asia, Africa, and even parts of Europe.
Most of these techniques and topics weren't new to me. I had listened to the audiobook. Perhaps the author's worried tone manifested too strongly via that medium because I wished that he had dialed down the rhetoric a notch. I also would have preferred tighter organization in his writing style and an index would have been helpful.
Nevertheless, I concur with his thesis. The clues have been visible for all to see. Even for someone who is outside the realm of foreign policy, the news regarding the Hong Kong democracy protests, the human rights violations of the Uighurs, and Covid-19 lockdown measures support the author's assertion of the autocracy of Xi. My own brief visit to China in summer 2019 was eye-opening. Surveillance cameras were ubiquitous with not one but several camera lenses mounted on each street pole. When my group was at Tiananmen Square, my guide would not answer any questions about 1989 and suggested that we Google the topic once we returned home. When my hotel TV aired news about the Hong Kong protests, within 10 seconds all the English news channels went silent and presented a blank screen. The compilation of the author's evidence in this book paints an utterly chilling image of China for its citizens and for the inevitable future global power clashes. What was concerning to me was China's recent success in influencing the West through its deployment of funds. Both Greece and Hungary bear closer scrutiny in the future.
A competition of systems has returned. Will China overtake the West and surge ahead to lead the world? The answer will depend in part on China's strength, but even more it will depend on the West's weakness.
December 28, 2023
Gdybym miała swoją własną prywatną listę najważniejszych dla mnie książek - takich, które znacząco wpłynęły na moje życie, decyzje, świadome wybory to „Chiny 5.0” miałyby dożywotnio gwarantowane miejsce na samym podium. Będę ten szalenie aktualny i ważny reportaż niemieckiego dziennikarza, wieloletniego korespondenta w Pekinie Kaia Strittmattera- nawet nie polecać, a wręcz usilnie wciskać każdemu do przeczytania. I tak jak nie przepadam za określaniem książek jako „lektury obowiązkowe”, „must ready” itd. to w przypadku tej książki muszę zrobić wyjątek i naprawdę bez krzty wahania stwierdzam, że fragmenty powinny być czytane i omawiane już w szkole. I teraz - po lekturze „Chin 5.0” jeszcze bardziej uderza mnie to jak pomijany jest przez największe, ogólnodostępne krajowe media problem AI, nadmiernego wykorzystania nowych technologii przez władze państwowe i prywatne koncerny. Mnie już jakiś czas temu skutecznie z szału na smart urządzenia wyleczyła Gosia Fraser i jej pełne rozsądku, mądrych przemyśleń i trzeźwego spojrzenia na nowe technologie podcasty i artykuły. Ta książka zdecydowanie jeszcze bardziej poszerzyła moją wiedzę i świadomość, co do zagrożeń nadmiernego otaczania się smart urządzeniami. A - i na co zwraca uwagę w swojej książce Strittmatter nie tylko urządzenia produkowane w Chinach mogą naruszać prywatność - zarówno amerykańskie jak i europejskie firmy (w tym m.in. bardzo u nas popularny VW) korzystają w swoich produktach z technologii, urządzeń zamawianych u Chińczyków.
Jeszcze wspomnę, że polski tytuł tego nie sugeruje - ale jest to również w znacznej mierze książka o samych Chinach - społeczeństwu, polityce, historii, kulturze. Zresztą autor wielokrotnie wspomina, że takie „przyzwolenie” Chińczyków na kontrolę, uległość wobec władz i rządy autorytarne jest głęboko zakorzenione w ich historii i kulturze. Przeciekawe są i te nie-technologiczne części książki.
Naprawdę, ogromnie polecam każdemu „Chiny 5.0” przeczytać - niezależnie od wieku, pochodzenia, wykształcenia itd., bo poruszane w książce zagrożenia dotyczą nie tylko obywateli Chin, a każdego z nas - jeszcze nie w tak dużym stopniu jak Chińczyków, ale z coraz dynamiczniejszym rozwojem AI i ogólnie nowych technologii jest to problem coraz bardziej i nas dotykający.
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Jeszcze wspomnę, że polski tytuł tego nie sugeruje - ale jest to również w znacznej mierze książka o samych Chinach - społeczeństwu, polityce, historii, kulturze. Zresztą autor wielokrotnie wspomina, że takie „przyzwolenie” Chińczyków na kontrolę, uległość wobec władz i rządy autorytarne jest głęboko zakorzenione w ich historii i kulturze. Przeciekawe są i te nie-technologiczne części książki.
Naprawdę, ogromnie polecam każdemu „Chiny 5.0” przeczytać - niezależnie od wieku, pochodzenia, wykształcenia itd., bo poruszane w książce zagrożenia dotyczą nie tylko obywateli Chin, a każdego z nas - jeszcze nie w tak dużym stopniu jak Chińczyków, ale z coraz dynamiczniejszym rozwojem AI i ogólnie nowych technologii jest to problem coraz bardziej i nas dotykający.
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June 23, 2020
A well-researched account of China's transformation, but one that lacks any sense of impartiality.
It's easy for intelligent, well-educated and well-informed persons to find faults in a state, esp if their own political values are dissonant with that of the state their critiquing. But this critique lacks any sort of even-handedness and China's literary giants from the Confucian and legalistic traditions are merely quoted to contextualise CCP rule. Thus the author inadvertantly implies that China's current system is a natural development from Chinese culture spanning millennia - which is ironically the CCP line too. Given the title, it would have been nice if the author had explored the Confucian notion of social harmony - a core principle in Chinese culture and one that has been appropriated by the CCP in a very specific way to denigrate, censor and even criminalise dissent. Similarly a brief overview of China's legalistic philosophical tradition could have provided a similar cultural backdrop to show how this too has been adopted and exploited for social control.
Still, this comprehensive anecdote-heavy critique is interesting and a reminder that the world needs to follow China's development closely.
It's easy for intelligent, well-educated and well-informed persons to find faults in a state, esp if their own political values are dissonant with that of the state their critiquing. But this critique lacks any sort of even-handedness and China's literary giants from the Confucian and legalistic traditions are merely quoted to contextualise CCP rule. Thus the author inadvertantly implies that China's current system is a natural development from Chinese culture spanning millennia - which is ironically the CCP line too. Given the title, it would have been nice if the author had explored the Confucian notion of social harmony - a core principle in Chinese culture and one that has been appropriated by the CCP in a very specific way to denigrate, censor and even criminalise dissent. Similarly a brief overview of China's legalistic philosophical tradition could have provided a similar cultural backdrop to show how this too has been adopted and exploited for social control.
Still, this comprehensive anecdote-heavy critique is interesting and a reminder that the world needs to follow China's development closely.
November 22, 2023
هیستریِ غرب از بیداری اژدهای چینی؛
چرا باید از چین ترسید و در ضمن حواسمون به فرافکنی غربیها باشه؟
0- از این به بعد سعی میکنم اول متن به معرفی اجمالی و کلی کتابها بپردازم، بعدش دیگه روده درازی میکنم.
1- کنترل اجتماعی و سیستم رتبهبندی اجتماعی، دیوار اینترنتی دولت چین، فیلتر تمامی پلتفرمهای جهانی مشهور و اهمیت جمعیت و جرم بحرانی و اثر شبکه، دیکتاتوری حزب کمونیست، تقدیس و کیش شخصیت حول رهبر حزب کمونیست--> شیجی پینگ، برخاستن مارکسیسم و ایدئولوژیهای چپگرایانه و دور خیز چین برای تاثیر در جهان( مهمترین برنامه ژئواستراتژیک تاریخ بشر: BRI Belt and road Innovation) و هزار و یک نکته دیگر کاری میکند که از چین و دیکتاتوری مبتنی بر فضای مجازی آن بترسیم.
باید از چین خواند و عبرت گرفت، زیرا راه استبداد را برای قرن21 پیدا کرده است. تکنولوژی راه نجات حزب شد، نه بلای جان آن.
اهمیت این کتاب در این است که به عریانترین شکل ممکن( و روانترین شکل ممکن، چون نویسنده ژورنالیستی قهار است و البته همین بخشی از کتاب است که باید خیلی حواسمون بهش باشه) نشان میدهد مختصات این دیکتاتوری مدرن ِ مبتنی بر فناوریهای نوین چگونه است.
نکتهها و فکتهایی که کتاب بهشون ارجاع میدهد بسیار بسیار بهتآور است و در مواردی غیرقابل باور. چند موردی را خودم چک کردم و وقتی دیدم حقیقت دارد تا حدی به روایتهای نویسنده اعتماد کردم. برای مثال اگر در baidu(ویکیپدیا چینی، بله در چین ویکیپدیا فیلتر است) عبارت 1989 را سرچ کنی هیچ نتیجهای حاصل نمیشود. سالهای قبل، برای 1988 یا 1990 با هزاران رخ داد و مدخل موجود اند، اما گویی یک سال از تقویم بایدو حذف شده است. در 4 ژوئن 1989 در میدان تیانآنمن اعتراضاتی شکل گرفت که به سهمگینترین شکل ممکن سرکوب شد(همان اعتراضاتی که آن عکس "یک نفر روبروی ردیفی از تانکها" یش از معروفترین عکسهای مربوط به مقاومتهای مدنی است). از زمانی که در 2012/2013 شی به قدرت رسید و سانسور و اختناق شدت گرفت، یک سال از کشور به لیست سیاه اضافه شد و نباید ردی از آن موجود باشد. مثل اسمِ وینیدپو Winnie-the-Pooh که نمیتوانید در رسانههای اجتماعیِ چینی ازش استفاده کنید. به نظرِ عدهای، شیجی پینگ شبیه پو، آن خرس دوستداشتنی و تپل است، البته نظر شی و حزب این نیست!
________
پانوشت این بخش: بایدو تنها به زبان چینی موجود است و برای استفاده باید از ترجمه آنلاین گوگل استفاده کنید!
2- تا زمانِ رسیدن به حدود 20درصد آخر، روایت بهتآور و سهمگین کتاب مهر سکوت بر دهانم کوفته بود و تاحدی تحت تاثیر تام و تمام نویسنده بودم و حواسم به "هیستریِ جمعیِ غربیها از چین" نبود.
از چین باید ترسید، اگر یکی از نکتههای بالا هم بود باید از چین و "چین شدن" ترسید حالا چه برسد که آنچه بدها همه دارد، چین یکجا دارد. (یه فکت دیگر که تو کتاب هم نبود، ماینکرفت نسخه ویژه چینی با وُرْدها و بایومهای مخصوص خود دارد. حتی ماینکرفت چینی با بقیه جهان توفیر دارد و سرورهایش منفک از تمام جهان است. حتی با تغییر آیپی هم نمیتوان از آن استفاده کرد.)
اما حدود 20درصد آخر کتاب که نویسنده داشت از تاثیر چین در غرب و کشورهای غربی میگفت، وارد جهان تئوریهای توطئه و نفوذ شد. حتی غرب هم از "دیگر قدرتها" میترسد چه برسد به ایرانی جماعت که دست انگلیس را در تمام تاریخ معاصر خود میبیند.
الان درک کردم چرا نباید از سر ترس تحلیل کرد. ترس به عنوان یک حالت روانیِ نامطلوب که ناگهان بر تمام وجود آدم سیطره پیدا میکند، باعث میشود آدم بخواهد سریع از دستش خلاص شود. ترس از قدرتی دیگر و نفوذ آن انسان را به آستانه تئوریهای دائیجان ناپلئونی و فراماسونریطور میرساند.
باید حواسمون باشه هرچقدر که اخطاری که کتاب میدهند اهمیت دارد، اما حواسمون باشه نویسنده ژورنالیست است و خوب میداند چگونه از ترس مخاطب استفاده کند. معمولا انسانها از اختناق، مخصوصا وقتی به صورت عیان درموردش اطلاعات کسب میکنند میترسند.
اخطارهای کتاب از این جهت مهم است که مسیر اختناق چینی را میتوان نامحسوس و آهسته طی کرد و آگاهی و واکنش نسبت آن خیلی اهمیت دارد. جالبه امروزه برای نبرد برای آزادی باید برای اینترنت و گیم و... بجنگیم. اینجا است که سرعت پینگ وقتی به سرورهای جهانی وصلیم موضوع مربوط به آزادی میشود.
از ترس نویسنده همین بس که با ارجاع به فلان کس، فلان دانشجو و فلان نهاد، میخواهد از چین تصویری یک هیولای مداخلهگر بسازد، شاید باشد و حتما هم کارهایی برایش کرده است.(خیلی مهمتر از فکتهایی نویسنده، مثلا debt trap policy چین ذیل نوآوری کمربند و جاده است که در حد فعالیتهای استعماری مداخلهگرایانه بوده است. البته اخیرا به علت فشار نهادهای بینالملی چین دیگر نمیتواند چنین قراردادهایی ببندد.)
اما دعوای نرخ تبدیل ارز و کاهش ارزش یوان زمان اوباما، ستیز تعرفه گمرکی چین و آمریکا زمان ترامپ و آغاز دعوای 5G زمان ترامپ و ادامه آن و گسترش آن به نیمههادیها و ریزتراشهها در دوره بایدن، نمودی از دعوای چین و آمریکا است.
رسانهها هم از این قاعده مستثنی نیستند، مخصوصا رسانههای آمریکایی. نیویورک تایمز و واشنگتن پست و آنکه من بیشتر از همه پیگیرش هستم، اکونومیست، به صورت معناداری بیشتر از همیشه دارند به چین میپردازند.
باید حواسمون باشه وسط این دعوا، توی تیم کشیها تحت تاثیر این فضای رسانهای نباشیم.
البته که پروپاگاندا حزب کمونیست چین هم جهانی داره برای خودش...
لعنت به سیاستِ روز. همون افلاطون/دموکریتوس و ارسطو بهتره بابا!
چرا باید از چین ترسید و در ضمن حواسمون به فرافکنی غربیها باشه؟
0- از این به بعد سعی میکنم اول متن به معرفی اجمالی و کلی کتابها بپردازم، بعدش دیگه روده درازی میکنم.
1- کنترل اجتماعی و سیستم رتبهبندی اجتماعی، دیوار اینترنتی دولت چین، فیلتر تمامی پلتفرمهای جهانی مشهور و اهمیت جمعیت و جرم بحرانی و اثر شبکه، دیکتاتوری حزب کمونیست، تقدیس و کیش شخصیت حول رهبر حزب کمونیست--> شیجی پینگ، برخاستن مارکسیسم و ایدئولوژیهای چپگرایانه و دور خیز چین برای تاثیر در جهان( مهمترین برنامه ژئواستراتژیک تاریخ بشر: BRI Belt and road Innovation) و هزار و یک نکته دیگر کاری میکند که از چین و دیکتاتوری مبتنی بر فضای مجازی آن بترسیم.
باید از چین خواند و عبرت گرفت، زیرا راه استبداد را برای قرن21 پیدا کرده است. تکنولوژی راه نجات حزب شد، نه بلای جان آن.
اهمیت این کتاب در این است که به عریانترین شکل ممکن( و روانترین شکل ممکن، چون نویسنده ژورنالیستی قهار است و البته همین بخشی از کتاب است که باید خیلی حواسمون بهش باشه) نشان میدهد مختصات این دیکتاتوری مدرن ِ مبتنی بر فناوریهای نوین چگونه است.
نکتهها و فکتهایی که کتاب بهشون ارجاع میدهد بسیار بسیار بهتآور است و در مواردی غیرقابل باور. چند موردی را خودم چک کردم و وقتی دیدم حقیقت دارد تا حدی به روایتهای نویسنده اعتماد کردم. برای مثال اگر در baidu(ویکیپدیا چینی، بله در چین ویکیپدیا فیلتر است) عبارت 1989 را سرچ کنی هیچ نتیجهای حاصل نمیشود. سالهای قبل، برای 1988 یا 1990 با هزاران رخ داد و مدخل موجود اند، اما گویی یک سال از تقویم بایدو حذف شده است. در 4 ژوئن 1989 در میدان تیانآنمن اعتراضاتی شکل گرفت که به سهمگینترین شکل ممکن سرکوب شد(همان اعتراضاتی که آن عکس "یک نفر روبروی ردیفی از تانکها" یش از معروفترین عکسهای مربوط به مقاومتهای مدنی است). از زمانی که در 2012/2013 شی به قدرت رسید و سانسور و اختناق شدت گرفت، یک سال از کشور به لیست سیاه اضافه شد و نباید ردی از آن موجود باشد. مثل اسمِ وینیدپو Winnie-the-Pooh که نمیتوانید در رسانههای اجتماعیِ چینی ازش استفاده کنید. به نظرِ عدهای، شیجی پینگ شبیه پو، آن خرس دوستداشتنی و تپل است، البته نظر شی و حزب این نیست!
________
پانوشت این بخش: بایدو تنها به زبان چینی موجود است و برای استفاده باید از ترجمه آنلاین گوگل استفاده کنید!
2- تا زمانِ رسیدن به حدود 20درصد آخر، روایت بهتآور و سهمگین کتاب مهر سکوت بر دهانم کوفته بود و تاحدی تحت تاثیر تام و تمام نویسنده بودم و حواسم به "هیستریِ جمعیِ غربیها از چین" نبود.
از چین باید ترسید، اگر یکی از نکتههای بالا هم بود باید از چین و "چین شدن" ترسید حالا چه برسد که آنچه بدها همه دارد، چین یکجا دارد. (یه فکت دیگر که تو کتاب هم نبود، ماینکرفت نسخه ویژه چینی با وُرْدها و بایومهای مخصوص خود دارد. حتی ماینکرفت چینی با بقیه جهان توفیر دارد و سرورهایش منفک از تمام جهان است. حتی با تغییر آیپی هم نمیتوان از آن استفاده کرد.)
اما حدود 20درصد آخر کتاب که نویسنده داشت از تاثیر چین در غرب و کشورهای غربی میگفت، وارد جهان تئوریهای توطئه و نفوذ شد. حتی غرب هم از "دیگر قدرتها" میترسد چه برسد به ایرانی جماعت که دست انگلیس را در تمام تاریخ معاصر خود میبیند.
الان درک کردم چرا نباید از سر ترس تحلیل کرد. ترس به عنوان یک حالت روانیِ نامطلوب که ناگهان بر تمام وجود آدم سیطره پیدا میکند، باعث میشود آدم بخواهد سریع از دستش خلاص شود. ترس از قدرتی دیگر و نفوذ آن انسان را به آستانه تئوریهای دائیجان ناپلئونی و فراماسونریطور میرساند.
باید حواسمون باشه هرچقدر که اخطاری که کتاب میدهند اهمیت دارد، اما حواسمون باشه نویسنده ژورنالیست است و خوب میداند چگونه از ترس مخاطب استفاده کند. معمولا انسانها از اختناق، مخصوصا وقتی به صورت عیان درموردش اطلاعات کسب میکنند میترسند.
اخطارهای کتاب از این جهت مهم است که مسیر اختناق چینی را میتوان نامحسوس و آهسته طی کرد و آگاهی و واکنش نسبت آن خیلی اهمیت دارد. جالبه امروزه برای نبرد برای آزادی باید برای اینترنت و گیم و... بجنگیم. اینجا است که سرعت پینگ وقتی به سرورهای جهانی وصلیم موضوع مربوط به آزادی میشود.
از ترس نویسنده همین بس که با ارجاع به فلان کس، فلان دانشجو و فلان نهاد، میخواهد از چین تصویری یک هیولای مداخلهگر بسازد، شاید باشد و حتما هم کارهایی برایش کرده است.(خیلی مهمتر از فکتهایی نویسنده، مثلا debt trap policy چین ذیل نوآوری کمربند و جاده است که در حد فعالیتهای استعماری مداخلهگرایانه بوده است. البته اخیرا به علت فشار نهادهای بینالملی چین دیگر نمیتواند چنین قراردادهایی ببندد.)
اما دعوای نرخ تبدیل ارز و کاهش ارزش یوان زمان اوباما، ستیز تعرفه گمرکی چین و آمریکا زمان ترامپ و آغاز دعوای 5G زمان ترامپ و ادامه آن و گسترش آن به نیمههادیها و ریزتراشهها در دوره بایدن، نمودی از دعوای چین و آمریکا است.
رسانهها هم از این قاعده مستثنی نیستند، مخصوصا رسانههای آمریکایی. نیویورک تایمز و واشنگتن پست و آنکه من بیشتر از همه پیگیرش هستم، اکونومیست، به صورت معناداری بیشتر از همیشه دارند به چین میپردازند.
باید حواسمون باشه وسط این دعوا، توی تیم کشیها تحت تاثیر این فضای رسانهای نباشیم.
البته که پروپاگاندا حزب کمونیست چین هم جهانی داره برای خودش...
لعنت به سیاستِ روز. همون افلاطون/دموکریتوس و ارسطو بهتره بابا!
April 14, 2023
کتاب بسیار خوبی بود و توصیه میکنم حتما مطالعه کنید.
این کتاب درمورد دیکتاتوری دیجیتال چین هست و اینکه چطور چین به این نقطه رسیده با توضیحات خوب و کافی.
نکته اینکه بسیاری از کشورها دارن سعی میکنن بتونن به وضعیت چین برسند از جمله ایران! و این وظیفه افراد جامعه هست که با تغییرات هدفمندی که میل به این دیکتاتوری دارند مخالفت کنند.
این کتاب درمورد دیکتاتوری دیجیتال چین هست و اینکه چطور چین به این نقطه رسیده با توضیحات خوب و کافی.
نکته اینکه بسیاری از کشورها دارن سعی میکنن بتونن به وضعیت چین برسند از جمله ایران! و این وظیفه افراد جامعه هست که با تغییرات هدفمندی که میل به این دیکتاتوری دارند مخالفت کنند.
January 22, 2021
I really wanted to read this book after seeing a few reviews. My expectations were high.
Unfortunately, it fell short. Not that it isn’t interesting or that that the topic isn’t important and relevant today. In fact, the book ends strong. Its an above average book but not as great as I wanted it to be.
I use WeChat. I write to colleagues in China using it. I’ve traveled to China, seen the numerous cameras, and know I'm watched. So, when I heard about this book, I put a hold on it from my library and dove in once the book arrived.
It does address the surveillances in China. It does cite two examples of the Chinese government arresting or meeting with people as a result of their WeChat messages. It does cover the development and use of AI along with Big Data to track people. It provides some insight and examples in to the discrimination and internment of the Uighurs but there are better articles on this topic from the New York Times.
All this happens in the second half of the book along with examples of Chinese companies developing and expanding these capabilities. The author lays out the dominance China is striving for across the world stage and connecting the viability of that plan with AI, Big Data, and surveillance.
The beginning is just too long. Way too long. Just read one of the first six chapters if you have any familiarity with China. No need to wade through them all. The meat of the book begins with the AI chapter, “The Eye”. That’s when it gets interesting. That’s the section I wanted to read – I just wish I knew going in that I could have skipped a third of the book.
Unfortunately, it fell short. Not that it isn’t interesting or that that the topic isn’t important and relevant today. In fact, the book ends strong. Its an above average book but not as great as I wanted it to be.
I use WeChat. I write to colleagues in China using it. I’ve traveled to China, seen the numerous cameras, and know I'm watched. So, when I heard about this book, I put a hold on it from my library and dove in once the book arrived.
It does address the surveillances in China. It does cite two examples of the Chinese government arresting or meeting with people as a result of their WeChat messages. It does cover the development and use of AI along with Big Data to track people. It provides some insight and examples in to the discrimination and internment of the Uighurs but there are better articles on this topic from the New York Times.
All this happens in the second half of the book along with examples of Chinese companies developing and expanding these capabilities. The author lays out the dominance China is striving for across the world stage and connecting the viability of that plan with AI, Big Data, and surveillance.
The beginning is just too long. Way too long. Just read one of the first six chapters if you have any familiarity with China. No need to wade through them all. The meat of the book begins with the AI chapter, “The Eye”. That’s when it gets interesting. That’s the section I wanted to read – I just wish I knew going in that I could have skipped a third of the book.
January 23, 2023
Strittmatter takes some time getting revved up with a lot of background history, and truly dips into the subtitle of the book in the 2nd half of the book starting with "The Eye" chapter. From there, it's a strong book and the momentum continues to the end.
The book was published originally in German in 2018, but this English edition came out in 2020 and includes several additions from the first year of the pandemic and various Covid-related surveillance and tracking, as well as more recent demonstrations and protests regarding Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Related reading:
Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China (read and reviewed in 2022)
The book was published originally in German in 2018, but this English edition came out in 2020 and includes several additions from the first year of the pandemic and various Covid-related surveillance and tracking, as well as more recent demonstrations and protests regarding Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Related reading:
Betraying Big Brother: The Feminist Awakening in China (read and reviewed in 2022)
October 11, 2019
“It doesn’t matter whether it is the government, the military, the people or the schools; east, west, north, south or the center, the Party rules everything.” —Xi Jinping in 2017
‘What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one’-Neil Postman
“Beneath this leaden silence, a rancid brew of pain, guilt and bitterness is fermenting, sending poisonous bubbles rising to the surface of today’s China. One of the most toxic of these is a kind of nostalgia without memory, and thus without truth. A nostalgia dreaming the monster of the past into a thing of beauty, and wanting it back.”
Earlier this week while on a promotional tour of Japan, the general manager of the National Basketball Association’s Houston Rockets sent a tweet from his private account. “Fight for freedom. Stand with Hong Kong”. Not, “Boycott China!”. Not “get out into the streets and oppose this horribly oppressive regime!”
Fight for freedom…..
Something as innocuous and seemingly deeply American as simply stating you support freedom should be innocuous enough. Sadly such are not the times we live in. Minutes later the owner of the team swiftly denounced his employees comments and the NBA itself issued a milquetoast non political statement on its American twitter page while apologizing for the “offensive” tweet and “hurting the feelings of China” on its official Chinese page.
Condemnation and retribution from China was equally swift. Games planned for years advance in China were cancelled, threats were made, and it was abundantly clear that any further statements would be met with further economic retribution.
What happened here? Did China, famous for “harmonizing” social debate within its borders, just accomplish the same thing in the self styled home of democracy?
Kai Strittmatter’s book “We Have Been Harmonized” argues that this is, far from being an isolated case, the way a resurgent China under Xi Jinping projects its economic and political muscle.
Before China was able to make companies and governments around the world grovel at its feet however, it needed to subdue its own peoples thoughts. It has done so with spectacular success through a variety of methods.
Mainly through censorship of the internet (with technology provided by Google to specifically to filter “unwanted” content) where people are allowed the freedom to search for celebrities or chat with friends but are unable to find any results for a search of “June 4, 1989” (the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre). Not that many people are inclined to search for it anyway in that China has effectively and ruthlessly erased inconvenient history:
“When the American journalist Louisa Lim was doing research for her book The People’s Republic of Amnesia, she showed a hundred Beijing students the famous photo of ‘Tank Man’: the man in the black trousers and white shirt, standing in the way of the approaching convoy of tanks with nothing but a plastic bag in his hand, and bringing them to a halt just an arm’s length away from his slender frame. It is one of the iconic images of the twentieth century. But only 15 of the 100 students recognized, to their extreme dismay, that the image was of China. Beijing. The Street of Eternal Peace that leads to Tiananmen Square. The other 85? They shrugged and guessed Kosovo or South Korea.”
It is not a matter of the Chinese being incurious about their history as much as being unaware that such a history even exists:
“The civil rights activist Hu Jia tells the story of 17 January 2005, the day Zhao Ziyang died. Zhao was the liberal head of the Communist Party from 1987 to 1989, and Prime Minister prior to that. It was Zhao who tried to make some concessions to the students on Tiananmen Square, before being toppled by the hardliners around the eminence grise Deng Xiaoping. Hu Jia knew his family and went to offer his condolences. When he got home, his wife Zeng Jingyang asked where he had been. He explained. She gave him a quizzical look: ‘At whose house? Zhao Ziyang? Who’s that?. ‘That was a bit of a shock for me’ says Hu Jia. ‘She was born in 1983, and she’s a clever, critical woman who studied at the People’s University, one of the elite universities in Beijing. And she had never in her life heard of Zhao Ziyang, who was, at least nominally, the most powerful man in the country for several years. At that moment I understood the power the Party has over our brains’.”
You remember what the Party, which is effectively the government, says you remember. You aspire to what the government says you should aspire to. Mainly a ruthless brand of consumption where everyone in a desperate rush get and stay ahead lies, steals, and cheats each other. Strittmiller paints a portrait of a society where there is no community outside of the Party and therefore no trust of anyone but the Party:
“If everyone in China today mistrusts everyone else; if everyone automatically assumes that everyone else is out to cheat and trick them, that attitude is rooted in a time when husbands betrayed their wives and children got their parents sent to labour camps, or even to the scaffold. The young people of that time, both perpetrators and victims, are now in power. They’re leading the Party, the state, the big Chinese businesses.”
One would think that such a society wouldn’t need massive surveillance but China has chosen to do exactly this. With the assistance of US and European tech firms and AI engineers, China has set up hundreds of thousands of cameras around the country. These cameras can spot your face in a crowd and give instant details about your age, where you live, personal life, and other details that make us human. Not used only for preventing crimes in progress or arresting criminals, these cameras are being used to predict future crimes. Are you in debt? Just lost your job? Distraught over losing your boyfriend/girlfriend? The cameras know and will most likely bring heightened surveillance of you.
If this isn’t chilling enough, starting in 2020 China will unveil its “Social Credit System”. It will compile every minute detail of your life and constantly score you during the course of your day on how good a citizen you are. Did you help that little old lady across the street? 10 points! Let your dog pee on the neighbors lawn? minus 20 points! All these points have serious life consequences. Get too far into the red and you may lose your passport, be banned from traveling on trains, be unable to get a loan, or have your child attend the school of your choice.
This depressing and dystopian future however is not something China is content to keep within its borders. It actively shops its surveillance technology to other autocratic nations for use on its own people. China has sent technical advisors around the world to brief governments on implementing their own “Social Credit System”. China has even used the US university system to further its own worldview through exchange students who, whether afraid of repercussions when they return to China (Chinese embassies around the world actively encourage students to keep tabs on each other and report unpatriotic behavior) or genuinely believing so, have forced changes in course curriculum that mention Tibet or Tiananmen Square. With the money these students bring in, combined with “Confucius centers” financed by the Chinese government that operate on University campuses, Chinese money is a siren’s song to a system that is desperately in need of it.
This is the China the world is dealing with. Behind all the wealth, the global infrastructure projects, and the talk of globalization, its a globalization on China’s terms.
As far back as Richard Nixon, It was once hoped that economic engagement with China would erode their system from within. Surely capitalism would force China to be more like us. In 2019 however, it seems increasingly clear that the opposite has happened. China is increasingly changing our system of government. Changing our discourse. Changing our lives.
June 1, 2022
This is a pretty good book, except that it takes way too long to get going. Another reviewer commented that "I just wish I knew going in that I could have skipped a third of the book." Here's that review, the best I saw here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I started skimming early, thank heavens. The book suffers from a graceless translation, and I found the author's many disparaging remarks about ex-President Trump to be jarring. Not that I'm a fan, but... Jarring.
Nevertheless, it's a pretty scary picture he paints. Most of this stuff I was already aware of. He is a knowledgeable observer and has good anecdotes. Cautiously recommended, especially if you don't follow Chinese politics closely. Weak 3 stars for me.
A brief Best of Year review at WSJ, that brought me to read it:
"Kai Strittmatter, the author of “We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China’s Surveillance State,” lived in China first as a student and then as a journalist. Full of interesting anecdotes, his book vividly depicts China as the perfect rendition of George Orwell’s “1984” via its implementation of “Smart Cities,” where surveillance cameras and AI algorithms watch and modify every citizen’s every action. This results in an outwardly “harmonized society.” Mr. Strittmatter not only shares with readers the reality on the ground in today’s China, but also provides historical and philosophical underpinnings of how and why China got there. Even as a China insider, I learned new revelations through Mr. Strittmatter’s vantage point as an independent journalist from a democratic country. If we let China run the world, we may all be harmonized."
I started skimming early, thank heavens. The book suffers from a graceless translation, and I found the author's many disparaging remarks about ex-President Trump to be jarring. Not that I'm a fan, but... Jarring.
Nevertheless, it's a pretty scary picture he paints. Most of this stuff I was already aware of. He is a knowledgeable observer and has good anecdotes. Cautiously recommended, especially if you don't follow Chinese politics closely. Weak 3 stars for me.
A brief Best of Year review at WSJ, that brought me to read it:
"Kai Strittmatter, the author of “We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China’s Surveillance State,” lived in China first as a student and then as a journalist. Full of interesting anecdotes, his book vividly depicts China as the perfect rendition of George Orwell’s “1984” via its implementation of “Smart Cities,” where surveillance cameras and AI algorithms watch and modify every citizen’s every action. This results in an outwardly “harmonized society.” Mr. Strittmatter not only shares with readers the reality on the ground in today’s China, but also provides historical and philosophical underpinnings of how and why China got there. Even as a China insider, I learned new revelations through Mr. Strittmatter’s vantage point as an independent journalist from a democratic country. If we let China run the world, we may all be harmonized."
February 26, 2024
Bardzo dobra jeśli chodzi o nakreślenie współczesnej polityki KPCh, która w białych rękawiczkach wpływa na wiele aspektów kultury świata. Lektura tej książki wyjaśniła mi wiele jeśli chodzi o chińską cenzurę i wpływy, które są widoczne również w zachodniej kulturze.
Z drugiej strony jest to książka nie pozbawiona wad. Nie podoba mi się brak obiektywizmu i silnie emocjonalny ton.
Kuleje omówienie historii, kultury i tradycji Chin sprzed czasów komunistycznych, zwłaszcza jeśli chodzi o tradycje konfucjańskie. Zbyt duże uproszczenia i skróty myślowe, które są używane jako podparcie tez. Nie mówię, ze tezy są nieprawdziwe, ale nie do końca przekonuje mnie sposób argumentacji.
Z drugiej strony jest to książka nie pozbawiona wad. Nie podoba mi się brak obiektywizmu i silnie emocjonalny ton.
Kuleje omówienie historii, kultury i tradycji Chin sprzed czasów komunistycznych, zwłaszcza jeśli chodzi o tradycje konfucjańskie. Zbyt duże uproszczenia i skróty myślowe, które są używane jako podparcie tez. Nie mówię, ze tezy są nieprawdziwe, ale nie do końca przekonuje mnie sposób argumentacji.
December 4, 2023
chiny inspiracją dla psycho pass?
nie miałam pojęcia o wielu z tych rzeczy, które są tu opisane. przerażające jak skuteczna jest tam propaganda, przerażające też jest to, w jakim kierunku idą chiny
obudziło mi to apetyt na więcej reportazy o tej tematyce, ten był bardzo przystępnie napisany
nie miałam pojęcia o wielu z tych rzeczy, które są tu opisane. przerażające jak skuteczna jest tam propaganda, przerażające też jest to, w jakim kierunku idą chiny
obudziło mi to apetyt na więcej reportazy o tej tematyce, ten był bardzo przystępnie napisany
December 29, 2023
Wolność za miskę ryżu (ewentualnie smartfon).
Od dawien dawna przepis na demokrację jest prosty. Wrzuć do kotła sporo przedstawicieli klasy średniej, dopraw edukacją i gotuj na małym ogniu. Et voila. Tak było w starożytnych Atenach, Polsce w XVI w. czy 200 lat temu w USA. Dziwnym trafem w Chinach ta sprawdzona receptura poskutkowała zakalcem. Kai Strittmatter postanowił przeanalizować co poszło nie tak. W efekcie powstała mocno egzaltowana, idealistyczna pozycja rozprawiająca się z "chińskim rozwiązaniem". Podczas lektury nie raz prychałam nad zacietrzewieniem autora, innym razem kiwałam z uznaniem głową, gdy komentował ślepą pogoń za dobrobytem.
Urzekły mnie rozdziały o SI i big data. Czyta się je jak rasową powieść SF - skrzyżowanie "Limes inferior", "Roku 1984" i "Nowego, wspaniałego świata". Szczególnie uderza gorzka refleksja o korelacji zachłyśnięcia się osiagnięciami technologicznymi ułatwiającymi i uprzyjemniającymi życie (kartami kredytowymi, smartfonami, portalami społecznościowymi, powszechnym monitoringiem itd.) z rozwojem autorytaryzmu. Pora uświadomić sobie, że dzisiaj my sami oddajemy swoją prywatność państwu i koncernom, bo chcemy żyć miło i przyjemnie, a Bóg raczy wiedzieć jak te dane są wykorzystywane. Doprawdy nikt nie musi nam wszczepiać chipów przy okazji pandemii koronawirusa, by wiedzieć gdzie jesteśmy, co robimy, z kim jesteśmy i najważniejsze co myślimy. Chętnie tych informacji udzielamy niepytani. Co do tego jak Chiny wykorzystują te dane, autor nie pozostawia złudzeń.
Jednak nie cały czas jest tak kolorowo. Strittmatter nie raz i nie dwa wznosi się na wyżyny naiwności, hipokryzji czy zapatrzenia się na jedną stronę medalu. Jednoznaczna krytyka koncepcji Nowego Jedwabnego Szlaku i państw Europy Wschodniej jako robiących interesy z chińską dyktaturą bawi. Gdyż tymczasem Niemcy, których Strittmatter jest obywatelem, chętnie współpracują przy Nord Stream 2 (któż by się przejmował bezpieczeństwem energetycznym) z Rosją płynącą prawami człowieka i respektowaniem granic innych krajów. O utyskiwaniu na kult władzy i pieniądza już nawet nie wspomnę. No może przypomnę, że już Demostenes głosił filipiki na dyktatorskie zapędy Filipa II kupującego sobie głosy zgromadzenia ludowego. Nic się od tych kilku tysięcy lat nie zmieniło.
Podsumowując, jest nieźle, mogło być lepiej. Wystarczyło mniej zacietrzewienia, więcej umiaru. Nie pogardziłabym też większą liczbą przypisów. Nie zmienia to faktu, że cieszę się, że odbrązowiłam sobie obraz Chin.
Od dawien dawna przepis na demokrację jest prosty. Wrzuć do kotła sporo przedstawicieli klasy średniej, dopraw edukacją i gotuj na małym ogniu. Et voila. Tak było w starożytnych Atenach, Polsce w XVI w. czy 200 lat temu w USA. Dziwnym trafem w Chinach ta sprawdzona receptura poskutkowała zakalcem. Kai Strittmatter postanowił przeanalizować co poszło nie tak. W efekcie powstała mocno egzaltowana, idealistyczna pozycja rozprawiająca się z "chińskim rozwiązaniem". Podczas lektury nie raz prychałam nad zacietrzewieniem autora, innym razem kiwałam z uznaniem głową, gdy komentował ślepą pogoń za dobrobytem.
Urzekły mnie rozdziały o SI i big data. Czyta się je jak rasową powieść SF - skrzyżowanie "Limes inferior", "Roku 1984" i "Nowego, wspaniałego świata". Szczególnie uderza gorzka refleksja o korelacji zachłyśnięcia się osiagnięciami technologicznymi ułatwiającymi i uprzyjemniającymi życie (kartami kredytowymi, smartfonami, portalami społecznościowymi, powszechnym monitoringiem itd.) z rozwojem autorytaryzmu. Pora uświadomić sobie, że dzisiaj my sami oddajemy swoją prywatność państwu i koncernom, bo chcemy żyć miło i przyjemnie, a Bóg raczy wiedzieć jak te dane są wykorzystywane. Doprawdy nikt nie musi nam wszczepiać chipów przy okazji pandemii koronawirusa, by wiedzieć gdzie jesteśmy, co robimy, z kim jesteśmy i najważniejsze co myślimy. Chętnie tych informacji udzielamy niepytani. Co do tego jak Chiny wykorzystują te dane, autor nie pozostawia złudzeń.
Jednak nie cały czas jest tak kolorowo. Strittmatter nie raz i nie dwa wznosi się na wyżyny naiwności, hipokryzji czy zapatrzenia się na jedną stronę medalu. Jednoznaczna krytyka koncepcji Nowego Jedwabnego Szlaku i państw Europy Wschodniej jako robiących interesy z chińską dyktaturą bawi. Gdyż tymczasem Niemcy, których Strittmatter jest obywatelem, chętnie współpracują przy Nord Stream 2 (któż by się przejmował bezpieczeństwem energetycznym) z Rosją płynącą prawami człowieka i respektowaniem granic innych krajów. O utyskiwaniu na kult władzy i pieniądza już nawet nie wspomnę. No może przypomnę, że już Demostenes głosił filipiki na dyktatorskie zapędy Filipa II kupującego sobie głosy zgromadzenia ludowego. Nic się od tych kilku tysięcy lat nie zmieniło.
Podsumowując, jest nieźle, mogło być lepiej. Wystarczyło mniej zacietrzewienia, więcej umiaru. Nie pogardziłabym też większą liczbą przypisów. Nie zmienia to faktu, że cieszę się, że odbrązowiłam sobie obraz Chin.
August 14, 2020
"The perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary." - Michel Foucault
Yikes. I don't know how to put all this into a review but I try to come up with a brief overview.
"We do not have to fear China but ourselves" is the ending sentence by the Author. To me it is a bit harder now to really believe this since this book clearly shows how the Chinese Communist Party slowly and carefully and well-conceived taking over and influence not only the eastern but almost every part of the western world.
Orwell once feared those who banned books. Huxley feared that one day there would be no reason to ban books because there was no one left who wants to read them. That is exactly the mindset the CCP wants their kids to grow into. They’re not only lead by oppression but also by changing the vocabulary very radical which very much reminds me of the „Newspeak“ in Orwells „1984“. Propaganda is everywhere and with all the opportunities that comes along with new technology it’s getting alarming effective.
Mao once said that political power comes through barrels. Xi Jinping who is secretary general since 2012 (and will remain so since China abolished the term limit in 2018) added the written word to it. The censorship in todays technological world of WeChat and Weibo is getting more and more effective and can be used to create the „new human“, as the CCP officially term it. In the eyes of Xi Jinping the new human is someone who is trustful and honest all the time, whatever that means to him and his ideology. How do they measure it? They accumulating a lot of data through millions of cameras in public areas and through online activities of everyone and merging it into Big Data on which they build a type of rating system for people. This rating will effect all sorts of things like the possibility to travel or to use certain payment methods. Just to show some numbers here: until 2018 China installed around 350 million surveillance cameras which are all packed with the ability to use artificial intelligence for tracking and detection.
Without privacy policies China can work extremely fast on evolving artificial intelligence which will lead to a great advantage over the western world in many different parts. Besides that people are not so fussy about this topic not to say that they don't even care about privacy at all.
The infiltration of the western world is one of the biggest goals of Xi Jinping and the CCP. They are using all sorts of techniques to influence not only businesses but also ordinary citizens. In the US alone opened almost 100 Confucius departments with the official intention to educate western people in Chinese culture and art. Those departments can be found in many western countries. Besides that the Chinese market is a big part of western businesses which often leads to them being a type of slave to the CCP.
I don’t want to say too much because it’s getting too complex really quickly with Kai Strittmatter mentioned a couple more frightful things. This book is also giving some insights in the current state of the technological progress in many different topics and highlights the fact that their citizens are way more interested in trying new things.
Yikes. I don't know how to put all this into a review but I try to come up with a brief overview.
"We do not have to fear China but ourselves" is the ending sentence by the Author. To me it is a bit harder now to really believe this since this book clearly shows how the Chinese Communist Party slowly and carefully and well-conceived taking over and influence not only the eastern but almost every part of the western world.
Orwell once feared those who banned books. Huxley feared that one day there would be no reason to ban books because there was no one left who wants to read them. That is exactly the mindset the CCP wants their kids to grow into. They’re not only lead by oppression but also by changing the vocabulary very radical which very much reminds me of the „Newspeak“ in Orwells „1984“. Propaganda is everywhere and with all the opportunities that comes along with new technology it’s getting alarming effective.
Mao once said that political power comes through barrels. Xi Jinping who is secretary general since 2012 (and will remain so since China abolished the term limit in 2018) added the written word to it. The censorship in todays technological world of WeChat and Weibo is getting more and more effective and can be used to create the „new human“, as the CCP officially term it. In the eyes of Xi Jinping the new human is someone who is trustful and honest all the time, whatever that means to him and his ideology. How do they measure it? They accumulating a lot of data through millions of cameras in public areas and through online activities of everyone and merging it into Big Data on which they build a type of rating system for people. This rating will effect all sorts of things like the possibility to travel or to use certain payment methods. Just to show some numbers here: until 2018 China installed around 350 million surveillance cameras which are all packed with the ability to use artificial intelligence for tracking and detection.
Without privacy policies China can work extremely fast on evolving artificial intelligence which will lead to a great advantage over the western world in many different parts. Besides that people are not so fussy about this topic not to say that they don't even care about privacy at all.
The infiltration of the western world is one of the biggest goals of Xi Jinping and the CCP. They are using all sorts of techniques to influence not only businesses but also ordinary citizens. In the US alone opened almost 100 Confucius departments with the official intention to educate western people in Chinese culture and art. Those departments can be found in many western countries. Besides that the Chinese market is a big part of western businesses which often leads to them being a type of slave to the CCP.
I don’t want to say too much because it’s getting too complex really quickly with Kai Strittmatter mentioned a couple more frightful things. This book is also giving some insights in the current state of the technological progress in many different topics and highlights the fact that their citizens are way more interested in trying new things.
September 22, 2020
Miejscami dość monotematyczna i naiwna, zwłaszcza w kwestii wskazywania różnic i potencjalnych zagrożeń dla państw zachodu. Napisane dość przystępnie, dzięki czemu nawet ktoś taki jak ja, kto na informacje dotyczące Chin trafia wyłącznie incydentalnie, mógł uzyskać przybliżony obraz obecnej sytuacji. Dużo o cenzurze i budowaniu autorytaryzmu, o samej technologii jest tam znacznie mniej niż się spodziewałem widząc tytuł. Polecam zwłaszcza tym, którzy chcą zobaczyć, jak fikcja znana nam do tej pory tylko z „Black Mirror” powoli staje się rzeczywistością.
February 1, 2020
Review to follow. Interesting insight into modern China.
July 4, 2024
Centuries ago, England and Netherlands clashed in the seas and Thames for trade. People fear a similar occurrence today between China and the United States, in the era of computers and robots. In contrast with an ever-growing literature dedicated to this rivalry, Kai Strittmatter offers a reporter's perspective on the workings of China's Communist Party (CCP) surveillance and propaganda policies.
We Have Been Harmonized is a good antidote to technological optimism and political naivete and it is useful for anyone interested in understanding life in a dictatorship. It is difficult to read it without acknowledging one's own biases and limits of understanding. My own is that I come from a former Communist country and that I was 11 years old when the regime crumbled with violence. I can't take seriously CCP's rhetoric and its pretense of knowledge and wisdom. I see China's results as happening despite the CCP not because of it, which is impossible to prove, of course.
Thus, I read K. Strittmatter's story in a peculiar way. CCP sent the army to suppress the protests in Tiananmen Square, on 4th June 1989. These protests became a source of inspiration for people worldwide, including in Romania and the regime still fears a boomerang effect. Today, the CCP is using the best tools provided by science to control its population, a thing that Communist leaders always did. They always pretended that they knew the future and today, they galvanized a global fad for protectionism and state control.
Nevertheless, Chinese and Western research or industrial policies suffer the same vice. The more precise a prediction, the less probable it is. Imagine rolling five dice and betting for a series of sixes at the fifth throw. And, as Popper has argued, predicting science is contradictory, because you are supposed to know things you don't know yet (see The Poverty of Historicism). The more a regime tries to control the society as shown in We Have Been Harmonized, the more difficult is to remain flexible, innovative and win the competition.
China remains a controversial state, its popularity plummeting with the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, the latter, a subject of K. Strittmatter's book. The lab-leaking theory started as a fringe conspiracy speculation and today, it finds a hearing in the New York Times. CCP still has a structural problem: a dictatorship that creates a middle class is always at risk and it may fall with the first major crisis (see States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China). It's not just a Western tendency, this is how India emancipated from the British Empire. Returning to the ongoing rivalry, I see a reverse relationship: the strategic competition with the US is not a threat, but a tool that helps the CCP to stay in power, because it justifies the internal oppression.
We Have Been Harmonized is a good antidote to technological optimism and political naivete and it is useful for anyone interested in understanding life in a dictatorship. It is difficult to read it without acknowledging one's own biases and limits of understanding. My own is that I come from a former Communist country and that I was 11 years old when the regime crumbled with violence. I can't take seriously CCP's rhetoric and its pretense of knowledge and wisdom. I see China's results as happening despite the CCP not because of it, which is impossible to prove, of course.
Thus, I read K. Strittmatter's story in a peculiar way. CCP sent the army to suppress the protests in Tiananmen Square, on 4th June 1989. These protests became a source of inspiration for people worldwide, including in Romania and the regime still fears a boomerang effect. Today, the CCP is using the best tools provided by science to control its population, a thing that Communist leaders always did. They always pretended that they knew the future and today, they galvanized a global fad for protectionism and state control.
Nevertheless, Chinese and Western research or industrial policies suffer the same vice. The more precise a prediction, the less probable it is. Imagine rolling five dice and betting for a series of sixes at the fifth throw. And, as Popper has argued, predicting science is contradictory, because you are supposed to know things you don't know yet (see The Poverty of Historicism). The more a regime tries to control the society as shown in We Have Been Harmonized, the more difficult is to remain flexible, innovative and win the competition.
China remains a controversial state, its popularity plummeting with the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, the latter, a subject of K. Strittmatter's book. The lab-leaking theory started as a fringe conspiracy speculation and today, it finds a hearing in the New York Times. CCP still has a structural problem: a dictatorship that creates a middle class is always at risk and it may fall with the first major crisis (see States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China). It's not just a Western tendency, this is how India emancipated from the British Empire. Returning to the ongoing rivalry, I see a reverse relationship: the strategic competition with the US is not a threat, but a tool that helps the CCP to stay in power, because it justifies the internal oppression.
November 17, 2022
to był naprawdę dobry reportaż, lecz zbyt dużo zdań się powtarzało i przy słuchaniu audiobooka było to lekko irytujące
May 31, 2020
Rzeczowa i ogromnie interesująca książka o chińskim autorytaryzmie. Głównie od czasów obecnego "cesarza" Xi Jinpinga. Zrywa on z wszelkimi pozorami tego, iż Chiny mogą przejąć jakieś standardy zachodnie do swojego systemu politycznego i społecznego. Wręcz przeciwnie - za jego rządów zamordyzm, cenzura, podporządkowanie wszystkich aktywności życia woli Partii. I ekspansja tego modelu za granicami, niemal na całym świecie. Autor pokazuje nowoczesny model opresyjnego systemu, który rozwija się coraz lepiej dzięki nowoczesnym technologiom. Kontrola Internetu, jego cenzura i wykorzystanie w celu propagandowym - to pokazuje iluzję twierdzeń, że Internet rozsadzi Chiny od środka. Wręcz przeciwnie, okazuje się, że rozwijanie sztucznej inteligencji pozwala na jego doskonałą kontrolę i wzmacnia opresyjność.
To nic nadzwyczajnego, jeśli się nad tym zastanowić. Wszak to tylko narzędzia. Niemniej, kiedy czytam książki poświęcone tym kwestiom i pisane z perspektywy entuzjastów lub słucham wypowiedzi dupków z Doliny Krzemowej - o rety, jakaż to naiwność lub niewinność. Ponury obraz Chin oraz ponura wizja przyszłości zawarta w tej książce powinna być otrzeźwieniem. Poświęcanie wolności i wprowadzanie cenzury na szeroko rozumianym Zachodzie w imię bożka tzw. wolnego rynku i handlu z Chinami to powoli zaciskająca się pętla na szyi. Autor nie pozostawia złudzeń pokazując, jak chiński opresyjny model każe płacić Zachodowi za dostęp do swojego rynku. Skala tego jest ogromna i chyba nie do zatrzymania. Kapitalizm to leninowski sznur, na którym Zachód zawiśnie. Ku chwale Chin.
To nic nadzwyczajnego, jeśli się nad tym zastanowić. Wszak to tylko narzędzia. Niemniej, kiedy czytam książki poświęcone tym kwestiom i pisane z perspektywy entuzjastów lub słucham wypowiedzi dupków z Doliny Krzemowej - o rety, jakaż to naiwność lub niewinność. Ponury obraz Chin oraz ponura wizja przyszłości zawarta w tej książce powinna być otrzeźwieniem. Poświęcanie wolności i wprowadzanie cenzury na szeroko rozumianym Zachodzie w imię bożka tzw. wolnego rynku i handlu z Chinami to powoli zaciskająca się pętla na szyi. Autor nie pozostawia złudzeń pokazując, jak chiński opresyjny model każe płacić Zachodowi za dostęp do swojego rynku. Skala tego jest ogromna i chyba nie do zatrzymania. Kapitalizm to leninowski sznur, na którym Zachód zawiśnie. Ku chwale Chin.
August 17, 2019
A sharp, scathing and scary polemic against the Chinese Communist Party that makes for a worrying read. 1984 has arrived in China and the CCP's totalitarian model is being exported worldwide with the acquiescence and, in some cases, approval of Western democracies and multinational corporations.
Read
March 28, 2021Phew. Won’t be giving this a rating, but I may collate some thoughts on it.
Read
October 9, 2022This is a book that may give the reader food for thought about the situation of governance in modern-day China, which, the author states, is predicated overwhelmingly on the centralization of power and loyalty into the person of Xi Jinping and the Party as an extension of him, and on enmity and denunciation of the West and its model of democratic governance.
The contents of the book says the following. To ensure the party's firm control over the state, there is widespread surveillance of the country's social media, dissidents are criminalized and 'disappeared', public apologies of previous civil rights activists are regularly staged and scripted for public consumption, news about disasters and acts of corruption are scrubbed from the news and the Tiananmen incident has vanished from the archives of history and memory, disasters that are exacerbated by corruption and political failure are remanded into opportunities for patriotic propaganda that celebrate the supposed successes of the responses of the government, for example through the building of new infrastructure.
One main problem is that there has been an unspoken social contract between the party and the people. This contract says that the party wields political power and sovereignty in exchange for providing the people prosperity, stability and security. This contract is being pierced or tattered in several ways, such as the decline in growth, the yawning gap of inequality between cities and the inner heartland and between affluent party members and commoners who are left behind, the lack of social security, and lately, the state failures in protecting individuals from Covid. Regarding this last bit-- in places like Wuhan, politicians were more concerned in preserving the image that everything was proceeding perfectly than to attend to the people, the book says. Because of this failure of the social contract, the party has tried a new route-- an easy way to shore up loyalty and nationalism even when the party has faltered in meeting the needs of the state. This easy way is to portray the West as an enemy, a failing but powerful one, on that is to be both mocked and be alarmed about. The party has substituted this fervent suspicion of the West as an effective way to feel protective of the CPP, the book says.
As for the plight on the ground: When citizens form the slightest complaint about local situations, these comments are filtered and scrubbed from the social media space. Citizens are encouraged to police their own thoughts and actions through a social credit system that offers or takes socioeconomic opportunities based on conformity to norms decided by the Party, and the widespread use of social media such as weChat as a convenient tool of communication, navigation and payment, has been transformed into a tool of permanent surveillance of the person's activities and locations at all times. Universities are instructed to remove Western values and teachings and to pay lip service to Marxism, and education from Kindergarten onwards includes insidious lessons on loyalty to the party and exclaiming the party's exceptionalism. It is not necessarily so that the people ardently believe the dictates they are being spoonfed-- rather, it is enough that they remain mutely complicit, that they submit and comply without outwardly questioning what they profess.
At least, this is what the book says. And it is terrifying, the book says, because both the political model and the AI tech tools used in its service can be exported by China to the rest of the world, as the challenge to the flagging Western model.
"The party has essentially kidnapped a broader pride in China and replaced it with its version of patriotism, which is heavily dependent on Great Power Nationalism and Han chauvinism. And it works, since many are still swept up in the narrative that China has been the eternal victim of Western humiliation, and the Communist party thr only salvation, and any criticism of the CCP is nothing but an attempt to sabotage China's global ascent. "- from the book
The book may seem rather heavy handed in its judgments and conclusion at times about China but this is an interesting book to read about the big-picture prognosis of China's state and the reader can form their own conclusions.
The contents of the book says the following. To ensure the party's firm control over the state, there is widespread surveillance of the country's social media, dissidents are criminalized and 'disappeared', public apologies of previous civil rights activists are regularly staged and scripted for public consumption, news about disasters and acts of corruption are scrubbed from the news and the Tiananmen incident has vanished from the archives of history and memory, disasters that are exacerbated by corruption and political failure are remanded into opportunities for patriotic propaganda that celebrate the supposed successes of the responses of the government, for example through the building of new infrastructure.
One main problem is that there has been an unspoken social contract between the party and the people. This contract says that the party wields political power and sovereignty in exchange for providing the people prosperity, stability and security. This contract is being pierced or tattered in several ways, such as the decline in growth, the yawning gap of inequality between cities and the inner heartland and between affluent party members and commoners who are left behind, the lack of social security, and lately, the state failures in protecting individuals from Covid. Regarding this last bit-- in places like Wuhan, politicians were more concerned in preserving the image that everything was proceeding perfectly than to attend to the people, the book says. Because of this failure of the social contract, the party has tried a new route-- an easy way to shore up loyalty and nationalism even when the party has faltered in meeting the needs of the state. This easy way is to portray the West as an enemy, a failing but powerful one, on that is to be both mocked and be alarmed about. The party has substituted this fervent suspicion of the West as an effective way to feel protective of the CPP, the book says.
As for the plight on the ground: When citizens form the slightest complaint about local situations, these comments are filtered and scrubbed from the social media space. Citizens are encouraged to police their own thoughts and actions through a social credit system that offers or takes socioeconomic opportunities based on conformity to norms decided by the Party, and the widespread use of social media such as weChat as a convenient tool of communication, navigation and payment, has been transformed into a tool of permanent surveillance of the person's activities and locations at all times. Universities are instructed to remove Western values and teachings and to pay lip service to Marxism, and education from Kindergarten onwards includes insidious lessons on loyalty to the party and exclaiming the party's exceptionalism. It is not necessarily so that the people ardently believe the dictates they are being spoonfed-- rather, it is enough that they remain mutely complicit, that they submit and comply without outwardly questioning what they profess.
At least, this is what the book says. And it is terrifying, the book says, because both the political model and the AI tech tools used in its service can be exported by China to the rest of the world, as the challenge to the flagging Western model.
"The party has essentially kidnapped a broader pride in China and replaced it with its version of patriotism, which is heavily dependent on Great Power Nationalism and Han chauvinism. And it works, since many are still swept up in the narrative that China has been the eternal victim of Western humiliation, and the Communist party thr only salvation, and any criticism of the CCP is nothing but an attempt to sabotage China's global ascent. "- from the book
The book may seem rather heavy handed in its judgments and conclusion at times about China but this is an interesting book to read about the big-picture prognosis of China's state and the reader can form their own conclusions.
November 22, 2021
A good (and scary) look at the "China Dream" of comrade Xi Jinping (who is always right). Some will object that his view of Western freedoms is too rosy eyed, but that is not the heart of the book. If you are at all interested in human freedom and want to know how it is dealt with in China, this is the book for you.
May 20, 2020
Na przykładzie Chin można powiedzieć, że "dyktatura wymyśla się na nowo".
August 29, 2021
You are on social media and type the words, "I disagree." They disappear. You retype them, and they again disappear. The state has decided that the phrase no longer exists.
You are called in for questioning because an AI algorithm has detected that you have twice in the last month bicycled within sight of someone who is under investigation. You spend days being questioned without being charge. If you are a writer or a poet, your work disappears in an instant.
Your credit score is no longer just a matter of whether you pay your bills and owe more than you earn, but is reflective of whether you are adjudged a good citizen. You frequented bars too often and crossed against a red light. You have committed a plethora of other infractions. You find yourself not only unable to buy the automobile you want but to travel on high-speed trains or via air. The state has determined this because it monitors your every move, your every social interaction, and even your thoughts via artificial intelligence.
As you adapt to this reality, you begin to self-censor. You no longer question your living or working conditions and particularly not your state. (After all, everything you see, hear, and read—literally everything—touts the fairness, equity, and democratic values of the state.)
Such is the reality of the New China as revealed in Kai Strittmatter's "We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China's Surveillance State." Strittmatter is a German journalist was has spent years covering China. He has witnessed the change from Deng Xiaoping's relaxation of restrictions, which ended at Tiananmen Square (which does not exist in Chinese history; young people have never heard of it and their parents do not speak of it) to today's rule, not by one party, but one individual, enabled by modern technology and Artificial Intelligence.
Strittmatter uses the metaphor of Jeremy Bentham's panopticon to show the effect on the individual. This building, never constructed, restricted a prisoner's view to a single window behind which a guard might be observing at any time. The prisoner could not see the guard and thus did not know whether he was being watched at any moment, but the knowledge that he might be was designed to create self-censorship...and to allow a single guard to hold sway over many prisoners.
As Strittmatter's book unfolds, it expands from China's control over its population to its effort to warp the world to its view. By sponsoring academics and blackmailing businesses, it has worked to conceal its suppression of Tibet and its Uighur population. Many western industries use maps that include Hong Kong and Taiwan as part of China. Western publishers that print books in China and filmmakers that depend on the Chinese box office have fallen in step with Beijing's commands.
Now, through its New Silk Road Project, China is co-opting democratic institutions and buying the loyalty of countries from Tanzania to Hungary. It is open about what it is doing and what it intends. He shows how Western use of Chinese technology, aided by Western businesses, is invading our own privacy and raises questions about whether we are headed down the same road.
Strittmatter ends with an appeal to Western democracies to rediscover the commitment to democratic values and pluralism that were once a beacon for the world. His argument is stronger for the fact that he is European. He takes his stance without the nationalism and jingoism to which we Americans fall prey.
This is an important book, but more valuable because it is an easy read. And it should be read.
You are called in for questioning because an AI algorithm has detected that you have twice in the last month bicycled within sight of someone who is under investigation. You spend days being questioned without being charge. If you are a writer or a poet, your work disappears in an instant.
Your credit score is no longer just a matter of whether you pay your bills and owe more than you earn, but is reflective of whether you are adjudged a good citizen. You frequented bars too often and crossed against a red light. You have committed a plethora of other infractions. You find yourself not only unable to buy the automobile you want but to travel on high-speed trains or via air. The state has determined this because it monitors your every move, your every social interaction, and even your thoughts via artificial intelligence.
As you adapt to this reality, you begin to self-censor. You no longer question your living or working conditions and particularly not your state. (After all, everything you see, hear, and read—literally everything—touts the fairness, equity, and democratic values of the state.)
Such is the reality of the New China as revealed in Kai Strittmatter's "We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China's Surveillance State." Strittmatter is a German journalist was has spent years covering China. He has witnessed the change from Deng Xiaoping's relaxation of restrictions, which ended at Tiananmen Square (which does not exist in Chinese history; young people have never heard of it and their parents do not speak of it) to today's rule, not by one party, but one individual, enabled by modern technology and Artificial Intelligence.
Strittmatter uses the metaphor of Jeremy Bentham's panopticon to show the effect on the individual. This building, never constructed, restricted a prisoner's view to a single window behind which a guard might be observing at any time. The prisoner could not see the guard and thus did not know whether he was being watched at any moment, but the knowledge that he might be was designed to create self-censorship...and to allow a single guard to hold sway over many prisoners.
As Strittmatter's book unfolds, it expands from China's control over its population to its effort to warp the world to its view. By sponsoring academics and blackmailing businesses, it has worked to conceal its suppression of Tibet and its Uighur population. Many western industries use maps that include Hong Kong and Taiwan as part of China. Western publishers that print books in China and filmmakers that depend on the Chinese box office have fallen in step with Beijing's commands.
Now, through its New Silk Road Project, China is co-opting democratic institutions and buying the loyalty of countries from Tanzania to Hungary. It is open about what it is doing and what it intends. He shows how Western use of Chinese technology, aided by Western businesses, is invading our own privacy and raises questions about whether we are headed down the same road.
Strittmatter ends with an appeal to Western democracies to rediscover the commitment to democratic values and pluralism that were once a beacon for the world. His argument is stronger for the fact that he is European. He takes his stance without the nationalism and jingoism to which we Americans fall prey.
This is an important book, but more valuable because it is an easy read. And it should be read.
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