Foreign Affairs
•75% Informative
Chinese leaders have built a high-tech surveillance system of seemingly extraordinary sophistication.
Facial recognition software, Internet monitoring, and ubiquitous video cameras give the impression that the ruling Chinese Communist Party ( CCP ) has finally accomplished the dictator’s dream of building a surveillance state like the one imagined in 1984 .
Beijing has built a vast network of millions of informers and spies whose often-unpaid work has been critical to the regime's survival.
Data disclosed by 30 local governments show that between 0.73 percent and 1.1 percent of China ’s population—perhaps as many as 15 million people—serve as informants.
Data from dozens of local jurisdictions suggest that the police program monitors somewhere between 3.4 million and 5.0 million individuals, mostly ex-convicts and criminal suspects.
The Chinese surveillance state remains untested in a less benign economic environment.
Economic problems will make it harder for Beijing to handle the spiraling costs of maintaining and upgrading its high-tech surveillance equipment.
The impact of a protracted economic malaise is likely to create three problems for China ’s labor-intensive surveillance apparatus.
VR Score
85
Informative language
90
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53
Article tone
informal
Language
English
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70
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Attention-grabbing headline
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Known propaganda techniques
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Time-value
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