Book Review: We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China's Surveillance State

Reviewed by paulml

We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China's Surveillance State by Kai Strittmatter, Harper Collins, 2020, ISBN: 978-0063027299

In the last few years, much has been written about Big Brother and the coming 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 will 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 may be, if it is even the tiniest bit not appreciated by the Chinese Communist Party (the real rulers of China), 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 search references to Tiananmen Square, 1989, June 4, or any terms that the Party would like to make disappear.  There is facial recognition technology that can pick one person out of a packed stadium.  In western China, more than one million people have been sent to "reeducation" 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 almost boring.  It is very much worth reading.