Harmonious Society: A Brave New World Surveilled by Big Data in China

Former "Süddeutsche Zeitung" senior reporter in Beijing, has observed China in depth for more than ten years, exposing the most in-depth and horrifying digital surveillance

Major western media such as "Washington Post", "Observer", "Sunday Times", and "London Review of Books" praised this book as "the wake-up call of the times"

"It is very easy for us to become slaves, and after being changed, we still like it very much." - Lu Xun

"Today's slaves mostly don't think of themselves as slaves, but as the masters of the country. They have been educated since childhood to be loyal to the collective, the country, and the party, but they don't mention being loyal to themselves." - Chinese Internet writer Murong Xuecun

"In this sky, the sun and the moon are loyally watching...the power of the Internet, where the Internet is, where the glory and dreams are." - China Internet Information Office

In the past, we always imagined that totalitarian countries were relatively backward, only using violent threats and spies. But today China's development has broken through the imagination of Westerners. The CCP is very enthusiastic about the development of high technology. In addition to promoting economic development, more importantly, it can fully control people's words, deeds, and even their hearts under the vision of a "harmonious society". Its high-tech rule is reflected in several aspects:

Internet: At the beginning of 2021, Chinese Internet users exceeded one billion for the first time. In November 2017, Tencent surpassed Facebook to become the world's most valuable social media company.

Big data integration: The market size of China's mobile payment has reached 17 trillion US dollars in 2017, and even beggars will ask you to scan the QR code to help him.

Surveillance equipment: According to the number of monitors in major cities around the world, Chongqing, which ranks first, has 2.6 million, an average of 168 per thousand people, and Shenzhen, which ranks second, has 100 per thousand people Fifty-nine units.

Artificial Intelligence: Surveillance camera manufacturers have obtained 500 million face data through relevant government agencies, and can even recognize 1.5 billion faces.

Social Credit System: Every people's behavior will be recorded in real time and become points in various fields of economy, society and morality, and the government will implement rewards and punishments accordingly.

The plots are part science fiction movie, part horror movie. The problem is that through mass censorship of information mind control and distortion of facts, it will create new human beings with rigid minds and easy to control. Second, it deprives citizens of their rights and freedoms. In the end, the more effective these technological and digital means of control are, the more countries will follow suit, threatening the stability and value of democratic societies.

Today, China has developed economically and technologically, but politically it has returned to a one-man dictatorship, fundamentally creating a perfect dictatorship. Ma Kai, the author of this book, has been a special correspondent for China for more than ten years. He has watched the Chinese people obtain the right to discuss citizens from the Internet, and witnessed the establishment of a social surveillance network that uses digital technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data. It has reached an unprecedented peak and paralyzed The autonomy and criticality of the people.

In the process of writing this book, he extensively asked ordinary people how they feel about digital authority, and also conducted in-depth interviews with executives of Chinese start-up companies and cadres at all levels of the party organization, allowing readers to understand from various perspectives that the use of technological means to greatly improve the efficiency of autocracy and dictatorship China, and remind the world that the all-round surveillance state described by Orwell is coming soon, and people’s words and deeds will be invisible without knowing it. However, we can’t even feel the surveillance, because the state has put Surveillance is ingrained in people's brains.