From Mao’s informants to Xi Jinping’s digital panopticon, China’s Communist Party has transformed surveillance into its most potent instrument of political survival. “We know how much the internet has changed America, and we are already an open society. Think how much it will change China. There’s no question China has been trying to crack down on the internet. Well, good luck. That’s sort of like trying to nail Jello to the wall.” So spoke President Bill Clinton back in 2000, wrongly predicting that the free-flowing nature of information on the internet would soon lead to the democratization of China. What he had not reckoned on was the remarkable ability of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to adapt to modernity, or indeed its fierce determination to leverage that very same technology to preserve itself and its one-party rule. When the CCP came to power in 1949 it solidified its rule by identifying and then persecuting those it deemed to be threats. By 1959, these terror campaigns had resulted in the execution or imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of people, with estimates of up to 12 million people considered as potential ‘counter-revolutionaries’, all of whom had to be put under surveillance. Large numbers of spies and informants were recruited for that purpose. But apart from terrorizing the population, Mao Zedong’s policies were often self-defeating when it came to preserving the regime. Not only was there a lack of resources for the development of surveillance systems, but the chaos of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) completely wiped out the CCP’s network of informants. After the shock of the Tiananmen protests and massacre of 1989, the CCP realised it had to do things very differently. Prevention would be the new strategy going forward. It was far better to nip dissent in the bud, quietly take potential ‘trouble-makers’ out of their homes or off the street before any real political damage had been done. The Lives of Others Information was the key. After 1989, large networks of informants were quickly recruited again, especially in what the CCP would describe as ‘political battleground’ spaces, such as in universities and in the troubled autonomous regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. What the CCP refers to as ‘key populations’ and ‘key individuals’ were put under constant surveillance. However, the Reform and Opening Up era of the 1980s and 1990s led to unprecedented economic growth and a much more mobile and technologically capable population. People flooded into the cities from the countryside. The Peoples’ Communes, where people could he controlled and observed easily, became a thing of the past. Not only was there a corresponding rise in criminality, but the CCP also saw a much greater potential for mass political dissent, both of which had to be controlled. The network of informants was not enough. Technology was the solution. Three factors were crucial to the CCP’s success in making a fool out of President Clinton. Firstly, the increased revenues at the CCP’s disposal due to the incredible growth of the economy enabled it to invest in the latest surveillance technology. Secondly, the rapid adoption by the Chinese people of technology – of mobile phones, for instance – and their presence on social media sites and online purchasing platforms made surveillance much more straightforward, both their ‘digital foot-prints’ and their online communications easy to monitor. The third factor might be the most surprising. Since the Tiananmen massacre, American companies had been forbidden from selling ‘crime-fighting’ equipment such as finger-print kits to China. But there were loopholes to these export restrictions in regard to new electronic technologies. In the 1990s and early 2000s, China had no real domestic IT industry to cater for the CCP’s surveillance needs. Asking no questions as to how their technology was going to be utilised, a host of American companies – Intel, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Nortel, Hewlett-Packard, Seagate, Western Digital, to name but a few – rushed in to fill the technology gap. The Chinese IT industry has since developed at such a pace that that technology gap no longer exists. In 1998, China launched its Golden Shield project, the aim of which was to modernise the IT capabilities of all its security agencies so they could store and share information securely. A necessity for modern policing, the Golden Shield project also contains specific applications for political surveillance. The effectiveness of the Golden Shield is dependent on the collection and entry of vast amounts of information for its databases – very labour-intensive for the police tasked with the job. A component of the Golden Shield project is the Public Information Network Surveillance and Control System, which is designed to secure all the public networks, combat cybercrime, monitor all online activity, and block the access of Chinese citizens to foreign social media, certain websites, or information the CCP considers too sensitive. This has come to be known as the Great Firewall. Orwellian State In 2005, China launched what would become its most expensive and technologically challenging project to date: the City Alert and Surveillance and Technology System, commonly known as SkyNet. Not only does this link all the police video networks, but more importantly it allows police to view footage in real time from surveillance cameras belonging to other government agencies, state-owned businesses, and universities, among others. This technology has been augmented in recent years with invisible ‘smart checkpoints’ that utilise car licence plate readers, facial recognition software, and even wifi ‘sniffers’ that collect mobile phone data. It is worth remembering, however, that monitoring of live video feeds by the police remains labour-intensive. This point is crucial: the modern Chinese surveillance state depends on a blend of sophisticated technology and unwavering human effort – as well as tremendous expense. Yet for the sake of its own political survival, the CCP considers this money well spent. For those who might argue that cities such as London and New York are also covered in sophisticated surveillance systems, the difference is that the rule of law constrains how such data is gathered and utilised. There are no such legal constraints for the CCP. For example, it is accepted that any personal data held by any company in China on staff or customers is available for the CCP to review. It is not just those Chinese companies that provide security expertise and technology to the CCP that form part of China's surveillance state – all domestic companies and organisations are forced to play their part in keeping the CCP in power. And for those addicted to vlogs made mainly by expats in China, documenting how happy they are in China, it is worth remembering that constant surveillance achieves two things: it identifies threats to the CCP, and it also serves to suppress those voices that might be raised against it. People do not need to be quietly picked up in the middle of the night if they are too frightened by who might be watching or listening in to speak out. The Emperor's Grid During the COVID epidemic, the Chinese government credited its ‘grid management system’ with the successful enforcement of quarantines and lockdowns, its ‘grid attendants’ portrayed as heroes for checking on the welfare of people, for delivering food and other services, and above all, for maintaining social stability. Before COVID, few outside of China had heard of its grid management system, and that it had been designed from the outset not just as a more efficient system to deliver public services but also to provide the Chinese state a deeper and more intrusive system of surveillance and control. China’s modern grid management can be seen as an updating of the ancient baojia system. During the Song Dynasty (986-1279), the eminent statesman Wang Anshi (1021-1086) had a problem on his hands. Not only was the military over-stretched with too few taxes being collected to pay for it, but Wang Anshi sensed a lack of common purpose among the people – a fractured society, if you will, where people just looked out for themselves, thereby making the state much more vulnerable to invasion and collapse. His solution, based on even earlier social control models, was the baojia system. Ten households were grouped together to form a bao, and then ten baos grouped to form a jia. Each household with two or more men of age was meant to supply one soldier, but each bao leader was also required to report to the jia leader all instances of crime and civil misconduct as well as non-payment of taxes – the jia leader in turn reporting all to the government. This baojia system was never implemented fully, and was often resisted by the people who did not wish to live within such a rigid, organised system. Unpopular and unsuccessful though it might have been, it still lingered in various forms in China until the 20th century – and also in the memory of the Chinese Communist Party. Attracted to the possibility that a similar system might assist with maintaining social control in modern China, the Communist Party decided to experiment with grid management. In 2006, the Dongcheng district of Beijing was split into large, medium, and small grids – each of the small grids being about 10,000 square metres in size. In each small grid, a grid attendant and an assistant were appointed, as well as a supervisor, a police officer, a judicial officer, a fire warden, and CCP branch chief. These personnel were tasked with enforcing government regulations within the grid, resolving disputes among the residents, reporting suspicious activities, as well as keeping an eye on the transient population. The experiment was considered so successful that in 2010 a further 35 cities were designated as pilots. In 2013, grid management was fully endorsed by the Chinese leadership, with Xi Jinping stating in 2017 that it was to be fully rolled out across the country by 2020. As with any large social programme, funding for the grid management system remains a point of contention. Local governments have had to find the money out of existing budgets. Many grid personnel have been given their designations on top of their usual jobs or work part-time. Only the wealthiest cities and towns can afford to pay new staff and integrate new IT systems and specialist surveillance technology within their grids. The legal status/authority of grid personnel has also been left vague. This has led to pushback when they try to enforce regulations or interrogate residents. Moreover, since the purpose of grid personnel is to generate information, and grid personnel always need to justify their roles, it is to be expected that much of the mass of information generated is of limited value, whether that be in regard to the delivery of public services or indeed the monitoring of suspected criminals and ‘trouble-makers’. It seems then, at present, the rollout of the grid management system is still a work in progress. Without expenditure on more fulltime staff and IT systems, the delivery of public services and the surveillance of its residents within many grids remains patchy and labour-intensive – and perhaps still very recognisable to Wang Anshi. But with the perceived success of the grid system during COVID lockdowns, and with the inevitable roll out of new technology as time passes, it looks like the patchwork of more than a million grids across China is here to stay. Blueprint for Big Brother While under house arrest in the United States, the aerospace engineer Qian Xuesen, read a book by Norbert Weiner entitled Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal or Machine. Born in China, Qin Xuesen had studied aeronautics in the United States, and had worked on classified projects during WW2. Considered a genius in the field, during the height of the Red Scare of the early 1950s and with very little evidence he was labelled as a communist and deported back to China in 1955. This could be considered one of the United States’ worst own goals. Qian Xuesen went on to become the father of China’s missile programme. After retiring in 1991, he was lauded for his achievements and considered a national hero. He remains famous in China to this very day. But he has a darker legacy. His reading of Norbert Weiner’s book led him to develop a deep interest in cybernetics, into the relationship between information and control – and not just in the field of aerospace engineering. At the heart of cybernetic theory are feedback loops. For example, in navigating a complex world, human beings use information received to predict what will happen next. Norbert Weiner considered it possible for mathematics to predict human behaviour, though he remained sceptical that it could be used to cure society’s ills. Not so Qian Xuesen. After writing his own book on cybernetics, and after his return to China, he decided it was possible that a fusion of people and technology could manufacture the perfect socialist state – an idea the Chinese Communist Party would eventually enthusiastically adopt. Perhaps aware of Norbert Weiner’s scepticism, Qian Xuesen decided that ‘social cybernetics’ could not work in a capitalist society which is often chaotic and vulnerable to fluctuations in the market. But much as missile guidance systems he had designed use feedback loops to home in on their targets, he thought it possible to design a socialist system that was also self-correcting. And this depended on information, as much information as possible: information about where people lived, what they did, and even what they thought. As the CCP recovered from the shock of the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre of 1989, it realised that it could not afford to be so caught off guard again. After condemning those who had supported the protesters, Qian Xuesen wrote a highly influential paper describing human society as an ‘open giant complex system’ where computers would not be enough, and that people, experts in many fields, were also needed to work hand-in-hand with technology to take what he referred to as a ‘meta-synthetic modelling’ approach to social engineering. Of course, the gathering of the necessary data or information for this modelling meant constant surveillance of the people, the information gathered to be fed up to the higher echelons of the CCP so social problems could be forestalled, and timely ‘interventions’ or corrections made. Hence the advent of China’s Golden Shield project, and SkyNet, and the splitting up of China into a network of more than a million information-gathering grids.
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