Read more
Where is the line between digital utopia and digital police state?
Surveillance State tells the gripping, startling, and detailed story of how China's Communist Party is building a new kind of political control: shaping the will of the people through the sophisticated-and often brutal-harnessing of data.
It is a story born in Silicon Valley and America's "War on Terror," and now playing out in alarming ways on China's remote Central Asian frontier. As ethnic minorities in a border region strain against Party control, China's leaders have built a dystopian police state that keeps millions under the constant gaze of security forces armed with AI. But across the country in the city of Hangzhou, the government is weaving a digital utopia, where technology helps optimize everything from traffic patterns to food safety to emergency response.
Award-winning journalists Josh Chin and Liza Lin take readers on a journey through the new world China is building within its borders, and beyond. Telling harrowing stories of the people and families affected by the Party's ambitions,
Surveillance State reveals a future that is already underway-a new society engineered around the power of digital surveillance.
List of contents
Authors' Note
Introduction: Dystopia on the Doorstep
Part I: The Platform
1. "Critical Data"
2. Engineers of the Soul
Part II: Back to the Future
3. Man and Machine
4. The China Dream
5. Little Brothers
6. Datatopia
Part III: Trade Winds
7. Digital Silk Road
8. Partners in Pre-Crime
9. Homeland Security
Part IV: The China Solution
10. Privacy Redefined
11. The Panopticon and Potemkin AI
12. Contagion
13. New Order?
Epilogue: Exile
Acknowledgments
Selected Bibliography
Note on Sources and Names
Notes
Index
About the author
JOSH CHIN is Deputy Bureau Chief in China for the
Wall Street Journal. He previously covered politics and tech in China as a reporter of the newspaper for more than a decade. He led an investigative team that won the Gerald Loeb Award for international reporting in 2018 for a series exposing the Chinese government's pioneering embrace of digital surveillance. He was named a National Fellow at New America in 2020 and is a recipient of the Dan Bolles Medal, awarded to investigative journalists who have exhibited courage in standing up against intimidation. Born in Utah, he currently splits time between Seoul and Taiwan.
LIZA LIN works as the journalist covering data use and privacy for the
Wall Street Journal from Singapore. Liza was part of the team that won the Loeb in 2018. Prior to the
Wall Street Journal, Liza spent nine years at
Bloomberg News and
Bloomberg Television.
Summary
Now in paperback - a captivating investigation of the blurry line between digital utopia and digital police state.
