We Have Been Harmonized

 We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China's Surveillance State, Kai Strittmatter, HarperCollins, 2020

In the last few years, much has been written about Big Brother and the surveillance state. In the area of social control of its citizens, China is far ahead of the rest of the world.

Under the Social Credit System, all citizens are given a three-digit number. Think of it as a FICO score that covers all aspects of daily life. A bad score can negatively affect a person's ability to travel by plane or train, their eligibility for certain jobs and their ability to get their children into a better school. No matter how innocuous an online posting, if it's even the tiniest bit not appreciated by the Chinese Communist Party, it will be deleted within minutes. The writer can also expect a very unfriendly visit from the police.

To get access to the lucrative Chinese market, Western companies, like Google, have agreed to remove all references to Tiananmen Square, 1989, June 4, or any other terms that the Communist Party would like to make disappear. There is facial recognition technology that can pick one person out of a stadium. In western China, more than one million Muslims have been sent to "re-education" camps.

This is a fascinating book. To see the "future" of total social control, look at present-day China. This book makes the worst of George Orwell look tame and boring. It is very much worth reading.