Strittmatter The Eye

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BOOK TITLE: We have been harmonized : life in China's surveillance state /
USER BOOK TITLE: We have been harmonized : life in China's surveillance state /
CHAPTER TITLE: The Eye: “The Eye: How the Party is Updating its Rule with Artificial Intelligence”
BOOK AUTHOR: Kai Strittmatter
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PUBLISHER: Harper Collins
YEAR: 2020
PAGES: pp. 167-213
ISBN: 9780063027299
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OCLC #: 1148138970
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WE HAVE
BEEN
HARMONIZED
LIFE IN CHINA'S
SURVEILLANCE
STATE
KAI STRITTMATTER
cL.
CUSTOM
HOUSE
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.ju. \a.,^!; j; ? '^ 'i'-- i'i-."'-~'s ':-
LI ^R
"^.f
1U
WE HAVE BEEN HARMONIZED. Copyright © 2020 by Kai Strittmatter. All rights
reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may NEW
be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission A PR:
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For information, address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, THE
NY10007. HCTW
HarperCollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales pro-

THE
motional use. For information, please email the Special Markets Department at
H0\<
SPsales@harpercollins.com.
Originally published in Germany in 2018 by Piper Verlag GmbH. THE

First English publication in Great Britain in 2019 by Old Street Publishing. HO^
English translation © 2019 by Ruth Martin
THE
FIRST U.S. EDITION
HC^
Designed by Lucy Albanese

Title page illustration (star) © iiierlok_xoIms/AdobeStock THE
WH
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
ISBN 978-0-06-302729-9 THI

HO
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as weakness at
ades of growth,
.e of the Party's
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e other: nation-
THE EYE
Inping, distract How the Party Is Updating Its Rule
.n already meet with Artificial Intelligence
eneration) who
"The perfection of power should tend to render

Dry about their
its actual exercise unnecessary.
lad announced
M.ichel Foucault
.ble to afford a
•ate his twelfth
going abroad! I
l!" The father's
In University College London, on a chair behind a pa"e<>^
;d the incident.
y little boy?
;LTXnTthTphTl:so;he;^
^;hlsKZ:eain"a sUn and frock co.. Before Us^
^'^^^^^bo^^z^
Luring thThismortal remains be put on public ^P^
:^ZrS::ôdS^pe^^
,ring a public lecture. But the """"ificilti<mottte^'
StXêZdZ^^^^^^
SttS"eT^""Itwls soon decided to, sparelhejub1::
dSUFf ^ ;°ndT^";peaU"g- head was placed a»p
1's skeleton. ,1.1
TemtsuZZ"hu.ying by cast fleeting glances "AephU^

Jl ^ .Tfies;-many ignore him. For a whileû co^
ÂaîrBTnAa7w&a7notme.ly stared .,êd
;::kh^rpoâb:^s skeleton picked up curious
1B8 • WE HAVE BEEN HARMONIZED
admirers and people rushing past, and streamed the images live on
Twitter. The team behind the PanoptiCam Project, which was set
up to research surveillance algorithms, among other things, called
it: "Watching you watching Bentham." Jeremy Bentham was the
founder ofutilitarianism, as well as one of the leading exponents of
the British Enlightenment, an advocate of rationality and freedom,
and a pioneer of democracy and the liberal society. He was also up in

the inventor of the panopticon prison, which to this day remains or a sc
one of the most illuminating metaphors for the surveillance state. the to
This state achieves perfection when it can stand by and watch as its tive sl
subjects take over the job of surveillmg themselves. in his

The invisible authority, which sometimes praises and some- so m;
times punishes, which has the power to crush a person yet which B^
shows how generous it is by not crushing them: organized religion envis;
has been working with this concept for thousands of years. You the p
can't see it, but it can see you. At every moment, day and night. strict
Which means that it might not be looking at you right now, but but
that doesn't matter. You only need to know that it could fix its gaze func
on you at any time, and you will begin to monitor yourself. Ben- effec
tham's panopticon was an architectural attempt to bring this form of pi
of surveillance to the world of the Enlightenment, to perfect and The

rationalize it. He himself thought it both efficient and humane, mm;
and spoke of "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, It IS
in a quantity hitherto without example."99 He could imagine his havi
panopticon being used as a school, a factory, or a hospital, but appJ

thai
above all it seemed to make the perfect prison. Bentham called it
thei
a mill for grinding rogues honest."10
The panopticon is both simple and brilliant: a ring-shaped

All
thei
building with many floors, all opening inward onto a central
afi
courtyard. Each of these floors is made up of a continuous row
the
of small cells. The cells each have two windows: one looking out,
2ED THE EYE • 1B9
the images live on to let in light, and one looking inward, into the courtyard, at the
iect, which was set center of which is a slender watchtower. This tower has windows
ther things, called facing out in all directions, placed so that the watchman can see
Bentham was the into every cell in the large outer ring, but can never be seen him-
iding exponents of self. Nor can the inmates of the cells see each other. "All that is
ality and freedom, needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut
;iety. He was also up in each cell a madman, a. patient, a condemned man, a worker,
this day remains or a schoolboy. By the effect ofback-lighting, one can observe from
surveillance state. the tower, standing out precisely against the light, the small cap-
y and watch as its tive shadows in the cells of the periphery," writes Michel Foucault
es.
in his book Discipline and Punish '.m "They are like so many cages,
raises and some- so many small theaters, in which each actor is alone.
person yet which Bentham died in 1832, and the panopticon in the form that he
'rganized religion envisaged it was never built. Yet it was such a powerful idea that
ids of years. You the philosopher Michel Foucault used it as a metaphor for the con-
t, day and night. strictions of modern society. If an individual is completely isolated,
u right now, but but most important, completely visible, says Foucault, then power
could fix its gaze functions automatically. "[T]he surveillance is permanent in its
3r yourself. Ben- effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; [. . .] the perfection
) bring this form of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary.
t, to perfect and The watchman, in other words, doesn't even have to be there. The
tit and humane, inmates of the cells merely have to believe he might be present: So
nind over mind, it is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good be-
uld imagine his havior, the madman to calm, the worker to work, the schoolboy to
a hospital, but application, the patient to the observation of the regulations. Ben-
'ntham called it tham was surprised that panoptic institutions could be so light:
there were no more bars, no more chains, no more heavy locks.'
; a ring-shaped All you have to do is isolate individuals effectively, and guarantee

onto a central their visibility. According to Foucault: "He who is subjected to
continuous row a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for
ne looking out, the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon
170 • WE HAVE BEEN HARMONIZED
himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he two moves in a
simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his tions; in Go, th^
own subjection." Those who are naked before this eye take over The Chinese
surveillance of themselves. mer, mathematij
Foucault wrote Discipline and Punish in 1975. At that point, draulic enginee|
no one could have guessed that technological progress would one number of poss|
day allow for the total surveillance of every single subject. One of cited in his Drei
the projects through which China wants to link up surveillance in the universe.
cameras and databases nationwide is called Xueliang. It is a play on strongest playei
the word for "sharp"—as in the sharp eyes of the masses, a slogan against AlphaC
From the Mao era, when the entire population was spying on each Mind laboratoi
other. The all-seeing eye, observing a population of 1.4 billion peo- match of the tc
pie from a watchtower looming above and seeing into everything, Lee Sedol 4-1.
has finally become a real possibility. China's security apparatus is To produce
thrilled. rificial neural i
March 15, 2016, will become one of those dates that the they fed in 30
human race will always remember. On that day, in a ballroom slightly differe
ae-ainst each c
in the Seoul Four Seasons Hotel, machines defeated man in a
way no one had expected. It was a competition not unlike that tirely new str;
between IBM'S chess computer Deep Blue and the then world umph in Seoi
champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, when the computer won. watching had
ade. The victt
Only this time, the stakes were much higher. The competitors
over the work
were playing Go.
Go is one of the world's oldest boardgames, invented more

men): the futi
than two and a half thousand years ago in ancient China, where it are going to t
the industrial
was called weiqi. For a long time, gentleman scholars regarded it
Artificial
as one of the four arts that every cultivated man should master—
words ofAiu
alongside calligraphy, painting, and playing the Chinese zither.
and Baidu,
Go, which is played on a board of 19 x 19 intersecting lines, is
many new te
infinitely more complex than chess. Even world-class players often
with all kinci
have to rely on intuition rather than linear thinking. After the first
THE EYE • 171
In which he two moves in a game of chess, ther are over 400 possible permuta-
iciple of his tions; in Go, that number is around 130,000.
^ take over The Chinese gendeman-scholar Shen Kuo, a famous astrono-
mer, mathematician, geologist, pharmacologist, cartographer, hy-

that point, draulic engineer, and general of the llth century, estimated the
' would one number of possible positions in a game of Go at 1017 . The figure,
ect. One of cited in his Dream Pool Essays, is greater than the number of atoms
iurveillance in the universe. On that March 15, South Korean Lee Sedol, the
is a play on strongest player of the past decade, sat down at the board to play
es, a slogan against AlphaGo, the machine developed by the London Deep-
ng on each NIind laboratory, now owned by Google. It was the fifth and last
million peo- match of the tournament, and it was the final blow. AlphaGo beat
everything, Lee Sedol 4-1.
pparatus is To produce AlphaGos algorithm, its creators had used two ar-
tificial neural networks that would train each other. To start with,
s that the they fed in 30 million moves by skilled Go players; then they made
'. ballroom slightly different versions of the machine play millions of games
man in a against each other—and from these games AlphaGo learned en-
nlike that tirely new strategies unknown to human players. AlphaGo's tri-
den world umph in Seoul surprised many and shocked some; few of those
uter won. watching had expected such an outcome for at least another dec-
'mpetitors ade. The victory triggered remarkably emotional reactions as, all
over the world, suspicion hardened into certainty (even among lay-
ited more men): the future is here. The technologies at the heart ofAlphaGo
i, where it are going to transform our world to a degree we haven't seen since
sgarded it the industrial revolution two hundred years ago.
master— Artificial intelligence is "the new electricity."10 These are the
'se zither. words of Andrew Ng, the one-time head ofAI research at Google
^ lines, is and Baidu, who now teaches at Stanford. AI is not just one of
êrs often many new technologies—it's the force used by algorithms working
r the first with all kinds of digital data, and in the future it will power every
branch of industry as well as many aspects of our private lives. It
will help reinvent everything that can be captured or supported

digitally, whether in education, medicine, the world of finance,
scientific research, transportation, or the city we live in. It is also
reinventing the authoritarian state.
Nowhere in the world was the fascination and the surprise at
AlphaGo's triumph as great as it was in China, the game's original
home. And nowhere else reacted to it with such resolve and speed.
China's leaders must have felt like the USA did on October 4, 1957,
when it was caught off guard by the news that its great rival, the
Soviet Union, had just launched the first man-made satellite into
space: Sputnik 1. "Control of space means control of the world/
Lyndon B. Johnson warned in 1958, when he was the majority

leader of the US Senate. It was one of the key speeches of the Cold
War. The future, he said, was not as far off as we thought," and
whoever won the space race would then have "total control, over
the earth, for purposes of tyranny or for the service of freedom.'
Two AI advisors to the Chinese State Council described AlphaGo's

victory in Seoul as China's very own "Sputnik moment."103 And
the Chinese state reacted in much the same way as the USA had in
1957: with a sudden change of tack, and a financial and strategic

effort that almost overnight led to the funneling of huge resources
into artificial intelligence.

"AlphaGo's victory fundamentally changed our thinking," says
Zhang Bo, a well-known mathematician and AI expert from the
Chinese Academy of Sciences. I saw Zhang Bo speak at an AI

seminar in the modern conference center in Wuzhen, during the
World Internet Conference at the end of 2017. Earlier that year, in
this same city, in the southern Chinese province of Zhejiang, the
DeepMind machine AlphaGo had given a repeat performance of

its feat before a Chinese audience, beating the 20-year-old Chinese
ED THE EYE • 173
Lir private lives. It Ke Jie (then at the top of the Go world ranking table) by
red or supported three games to nil. After the match, the defeated Ke Jie, who is a
world of finance, celebrity in China, looked somewhat baffled. He later described
live in. It is also AlphaGo as the Go God.
The undisputed star of the conference that year was not the
id the surprise at Apple boss Tim Cook, who was in attendance; nor was it Chinas
e game s original chief ideologue Wang Huning, who brought greetings from his
ssolve and speed. party leader Xi Jinping and announced that the digital economy
October 4, 1957, was going to become the driving force behind China's economy as
s great rival, the a whole: "We will not let this opportunity pass us by." The star was
ade satellite into not even the internet itself—it was the miracle of artificial intelli-
)1 of the world," gence. "We will build a strong China with big data and artificial
ra-s the majority intelligence, said Wang Huning.
AesoftheCold The euphoria of their Chinese hosts was echoed by the foreign-
e thought," and ers present in Wuzhen. The American IT expert John E. Hopcroft
:al control, over could be heard prophesying a third great revolution for humanity:
ce of freedom." there was the Neolithic revolution ten thousand years ago, when
ibedAlphaGos humans first became settlers; then came the industrial revolution;
oment."103 And
now the information revolution was upon us. Hopcroft had two
the USA had in main messages to give his rapt audience. First: thanks to AI, in
il and strategic the future only a quarter of the population would be required to
huge resources produce and provide the sum total of all goods and services. And
second, Hopcroft said, only two nations were going to profit from
thinking," says the AI revolution: the USA and China. Everywhere else lacked the
^pert from the infrastructure: when it came to AI, the threshold for entry was
peak at an AI simply too high.
en, during the Delegates also heard Vaughan Smith, the Facebook vice pres-
sr that year, in ident responsible for AI, introducing his platform (banned in
Zhejiang, the China) to the audience. Smith was eager to assure his listeners,
srformance of many of whom would be unfamiliar with Facebook, that, like all
ir-old Chinese other technology, artificial intelligence would bring good things—
and that in the Facebook laboratories, at least, they were "havim
a blast/
He underpinned his optimism with examples from Face-
book's own AI research. Currently, they excelled at getting in-
formation from machines to people; the new challenge was how
to transfer information from human brains to the machines. A
brain produces one terabyte of data every second, the equivalent
of 40 to 50 feature films shot in HD, said Smith. The big ques-

tion is—how do you stream that data from living brains into
whirring hard drives? At least, that is the question at Facebook,

where according to Smith they are working day and night to find
an answer.
If I understood Smith correctly, Facebook is doing all this

with the noble aim of creating a world in which a person suffering
from complete paralysis could operate a keyboard using just their
mind and write 100 words a minute. Unfortunately, said Smith,
the man on the street often had entirely the wrong idea about AI
research, which was one of the reasons that the general tone of
the debate was so anxious. He went on to report proudly on the
project's latest coup: a cap that uses lasers to read the neurons in
the brain.
A cap that can read your mind in real time, and siphon off all
the films that play there into a machine? Isn't this just the kind of
Bond-villain-style device the man on the street imagines AI scien-
tists to be inventing—and is understandably very anxious about?
It didn t seem to have occurred to Smith.
The Chinese members of the audience listened intently. "We
extend a warm welcome to the international companies and insti-
tutes here, and invite them to open offices here in China and share
the results of their research with us," said Chen Zhaoxiong, deputy
minister in the Ministry for Industry and Information Technol-

THE EYE • I7S
r were "having ogy (MIIT), with disarming openness. Afterward, representatives
of Chinese industry presented their first AI successes. Lu Yimin,

•s from Face- the president of China Unicom, one of the country's two telecoms
at getting in- giants, said that the age of isolated islands of data was over: In
enge was how the future, we'll have a central big-data platform." Having all the
' machines. A available information about each customer in one place—that
he equivalent was the way to follow through on the firm's new motto: Be a
The big ques- customer-friendly creator of smart living.'
g brains into 'Smart" was also the key word for Robin Li, CEO of the
at Facebook, search-engine company Baidu. In 2016, Baidu was hit by a scan-
night to find dal when it emerged that search results were being manipulated
to the benefit of suspect advertising customers. Cancer patients

loing all this in search of medical help were directed toward the website of a
•son suffering dubious group of clinics, and the death of a 21-year-old student
;ing just their with cancer triggered a debate about Baidu's practices that went
r, said Smith, on for months. With state support, the company is now trying to
dea about AI reinvent itself as an AI business, taking Google as its role model.
neral tone of Cars, supermarkets, cities—all will be smart in the future. No
oudly on the more traffic jams, and no environmental damage. In the future,
e neurons in everyone will be relaxed and cheerful. We're going to make people
happier," Robin Li enthused. He closed by saying: We need to

•iphon off all inject artificial intelligence into every corner of human life.'
t the kind of And that is just what China is doing. Xi Jinping has called for
ties AI scien- his country to become the "world leader" in AI as quickly as pos-
xious about? sible. Scientists must venture bravely out "into no man's land," so
that China can also "occupy the commanding heights" in the area
itently. "We of artificial intelligence.104 Barely a year after AlphaGo beat the
es and insti- South Korean Lee, and only two months after it beat Chinas Ke
tia and share Jie, Chinas State Council published a "Next Generation Artificial
ong, deputy Intelligence Development Plan."105 It is an extraordinarily ambi-
3n Technol- tious plan. Artificial intelligence, the authors write, will change
17B • WE HAVE BEEN HARMONIZED
human life and the face of the earth. AI has become "a new fo- always
cus of international competition. AI is a strategic technology that breath
will lead in the future." AI will turn the commercial world on
its head and become the new engine of economic development.
And finally, AI holds unprecedented "new opportunities for social The e

construction," which is Party-speak for social control. An article them
in the Guangming Daily, the Party newspaper for intellectuals, de- the
scribed Chinas power and wealth at the time when the peoples of than
the world still lived in agrarian societies. "But then our country watd
missed out on the industrial revolution" and fell behind the West. the f
China is not about to make the same mistake with big data and tell;
AI: "Digitalization has given the Chinese people the opportunity you,
of the millennium."106 "Thi
Various players in China, from private high-tech companies is a
and universities to cities, provincial governments, ministries, all the mee
way to the military, had for some time been working on their own farr
programs in the fields of big data and AI. But the State Councils pie
plan hit them like a thunderbolt, and their efforts are now being Th<
combined and multiplied. By 2020, China aims to draw level with ing
the "leading research nations," meaning of course the USA. In wil

at
2025, China wants to achieve its own important breakthroughs
in AI research and use. And by 2030, Beijing wants China to be mi

ad
the only frontrunner and "the most important center for AI inno-
th
vation in the world." At that point, according to the plan, the coun-
try's AI industry should be worth the equivalent of $131 billion. As

an added bonus, "public security" will be more seamless than ever
before, thanks to "intelligent surveillance, early-warning, and con-
trol systems." The plan calls for new "intelligent applications" for
the "management of society," with the specific example of "video
image analysis and identification technologies, biometric identifi-

cation technologies, intelligent security, and policing products." As
THE EYE • 177
me a new fo- always in China, developments are coming thick and fast in the
xhnology that breathless rush to catch up and overtake.
rcial world on
development.
lities for social The eye of the dragonfly is made up of 28,000 facets, each of
rol. An article them a little eye in itself. Dragonflies have a 360-degree view of
tellectuals, de- the world and can pick up images five to six times more quickly
the peoples of than humans. Dragonfly Eyes is the title of a feature film that I
i our country watched on an autumn day in 2017, in an artist's studio in one of
Ind the West. the faceless new estates north of Beijing's fourth ring road. "I'll
big data and tell you a secret," says a young man in the film. "I often watch
s opportunity you, on the monitor." Then, from ofF-screen, the narrator's voice:
'This is a man," he says. "He will be seen 300 times each day. This
;h companies is a woman. Her privacy is all used up. The man and the woman
îstries, all the meet." It's a love story, to begin with. The woman works on a dairy
on their own farm. She watches the cows. And is watched by cameras. The peo-
ate Council s pie who monitor the cameras are also being watched, watching.
re now being The film shows a couple having sex in a car, it shows sweet noth-
aw level with ings being whispered in a restaurant, a car chase on the motorway,
Ae USA. In wild punch-ups, and plastic surgery. The film has been screened
•akthroughs" at festivals, including the Toronto International Film Festival. It
China to be may be the first feature film for which not a single scene has been
forAIinno- acted or specially filmed. Every image, every scene—over 600 of
in, the coun- them—comes from Chinese surveillance and live-stream cameras.
>1 billion. As China is eagerly bringing the future into the present, and at a
'ss than ever much faster pace than the West dares to adopt. "In 2013, when
ig, and con- I had the idea for the film, there was hardly any material," says
ications" for the Beijing artist Xu Bing, who had become a global name in the
•Ie of "video late 1980s with his installation "A Book from the Sky," for which
-hric identifi- he invented thousands of new Chinese characters. But then, in
'oducts." As around 2015, suddenly all these streams started appearing online,
on websites that anyone could access. A lot of them were surveil- versities. T|
lance cameras belonging to individuals and private companies. the camei|
Suddenly we had much, much more material than we ever could captures
have hoped for. It exploded at a rate no one could imagine." Xu area. "Ma|
Bing's team set up 20 computers to download images 24 hours a out. "But I

day. They took 11,000 hours of video and distilled it down to 81 "Attractrvj
minutes for Dragonfly Eyes. me that t1
A few kilometers from Xu Bing's studio is a functional room customeri
with screens on the walls—a lot of screens, with faces on them. "Annoye^
They are our faces: from the street, from the corridor, each with a a video
name, sex, and ID number. They have been captured by the cam- for me:
eras of Megvii Face++, one of the hottest start-ups in a hot sector, what gru
which claims it wants to change the world. Here, artificial intelli- China.
gence is a business model. Megvii Face++ is already doing some- Tliar

thing the State Council plan has only just called for. In this room were abl
stands a young man named Xie Yinan. He's a marketing director. faces loi
Xie Yinan is wearing sneakers, a T-shirt, cool glasses; he laughs their fai
often and speaks with the missionary zeal of someone who looks shoppii1
the future in the eye every day. "It s like being in a movie," he says. citizens
Ive been here three years now, and when I started, I couldn't have earners
dreamed we'd be able to do the stuff we re doing today. All the station;
things you ve seen in science fiction films—we re going to make people

them a reality." He looks exhausted; it's been a long time since he the po
had a day off. But he's also euphoric. His country wants to become supern
the world number one in the field of artificial intelligence. And his custon
company wants to become the number one in its field. These are wear,
the times we re living in. We want to give the city eyes, says Xie categc
Yinan. "And we want to make them intelligent/ with
Megvii and SenseTime, probably its biggest competitor, are A]
based not far from each other in modern office blocks in the Haid- aheac
ian district of Beijing, cheek by jowl with the country's elite uni- point
THE EYE • 179
them were surveij-

versities. The glass door at the entrance to SenseTime opens when
=>nvate companies.
the cameras recognize the face of the person approaching. One
han we ever could
captures my face and projects it onto a screen in the reception
3uld imagine." Xu
area. "Male, it says next to my picture. Age: 45. Its seven years
images 24 hours a
out. "But you look so much younger," says the lady on reception.
lied it down to 81
"Attractiveness: 99 percent," the screen caption adds. It occurs to
me that the algorithm might just have a flattery mode for potential
1 functional room
customers programmed into it. Then the screen shows my mood:
th faces on them.
"Annoyed." Well, overtired might be more accurate. And then
•ridor, each with a
a video screen starts to play an ad that the system has selected
tured by the cam-
for me: Wuliangye, a millet-based baijiu, 52 percent proof. Just
ps in a hot sector,
what grumpy 45-year-olds with money and power would drink in
^ artificial intelli-
China.
âdy doing some-
Thanks to the technology of SenseTime and Megvii, people
for. In this room
were able to unlock their Huawei or Vivo smartphones using their
arlceting director.
faces long before Apple came up with the idea. They can also use
passes; he laughs
their faces to order fries in KFC in Hangzhou. Or pay for their
neone who looks
shopping using the Alipay app, as more than 800 million Chinese
i movie," he says.
citizens already do on a regular basis. Hotels in China use Megvii
i, I couldn't have
cameras to check that guests really are who they say they are. Train
tg today. All the
stations in cities like Guangzhou or Wuhan only allow entry to
s going to make
people once their faces have been scanned and checked against
ng time since he
the police database. The company is currently testing unmanned
ânts to become
supermarkets. "Thanks to our cameras, we can tell how old
ligence. And his
customers are, whether they're physically fit and what brands they
field. These are
wear," says Xie. "And judging from the things they buy, we can
Y eyes," says Xie
categorize them as a certain type of person, and then target them
with specific ads and special offers.'

competitor, are
Another group has been taken through the exhibition room
^s in the Haid-
ahead of us, one of whom is wearing a police uniform. The guide
ntrys elite uni-
points to a screen on which a great crowd of people is moving; it
looks like the crowd is swaying back and forth, and the people on wanted li;
the screen are highlighted in various shades of red and green. It 2018,in -c
looks like an infrared picture. Among other things, the guide tells whose pr
us, the system can predict the movements of crowds. "Weve sold nomic of
it into a lot of provinces, and it's being used in Xinjiang, too . . . The
We've had some good feedback." Xinjiang is the troubled province at a pan
in western China that is home to the Muslim Uighurs. frequenc
The eyes of the city. The eyes of the Party. For the individual, a few bl(
his or her face becomes a key, opening the door to the world out- crowds.
side. For the observer, the camera becomes a key that unlocks the says the
world inside the individual, and their behavior. "Criminals today people ;
need to think hard about whether they're going to keep commit- of peop
ting crimes," says Xie Yinan. "Our algorithm can support net- going a
works of 50,000 to 100,000 surveillance cameras. We can tell you abnorn
what kind of person you'll find in a given place at a given time. In
We can ask: 'Who is that? Where is he? How long is he there for? there ^
Where's he going now?' We track a person from one camera to the from 1
and t(
next." The system, says Xie, is already much better at recognizing
head-1
faces than people are. The new cameras also increase accuracy by
combining facial and gait recognition, as each of us has a very

The sl
distinct walking style. progr

willir
Megvii and the other companies advertise their commercial
Scien
applications, showcasing apps that magic a funny dog s nose onto
noloj
your face. But the identity of their most important investor and
chip'
their biggest customer is no secret: its the state, and in particular
I
the security services. Xie talks about receiving letters of gratitude
for 1
from police stations all over the country. Some 3,000 criminals,
is to
whose faces were stored in the authorities' databases, have fallen
feet
into the laps of the police over the course of the last year, he says,
issu
thanks to the cameras. The 2017 Qingdao International Beer Fes-
rival made headlines: 25 people who had spent a long time on pw

EO
THE EYE • 181
tnd the people on wanted lists were arrested as a result of facial recognition. In April
red and green. ^ 2018, in a stadium in Nanchang, cameras picked out a 31-year-old
gs, the guide tells whose profile had been placed on a national database for "eco-
wds. "We've sold
nomic offenses"—from a crowd of 60,000 concert-goers.
^.injiang, too . .
The cameras can do more: they report when a face turns up
roubled province at a particular place—a bus stop, for instance—with suspicious
^hurs.
frequency. "That could be a pickpocket," says Xie. At SenseTime,
•r the individual, a few blocks away, they also demonstrate how the cameras analyze
:o the world out-
crowds. The system can tell when a lot of people are gathering,
thsit unlocks the
says the company s spokeswoman Yuan Wei. And when a lot of
Criminals today people are about to gather. The algorithm can also see when a lot
o keep commit- of people are moving in one direction, while a single individual is
an support net-
going against the flow. "The system then identifies this person as
We can tell you abnormal," says Yuan Wei. And it sounds the alarm.
at a given time.
In 2017, Megvii had around 200 employees. Two years later,
? is he there for? there were more than 2,000, many of whom have returned home
ie camera to the
from the USA. China isn't just trying to import AI technologies
r at recognizing and to buy out firms in the USA and Europe; it is also actively
ase accuracy by head-hunting AI talent, in growing competition with Silicon Valley.
^ us has a very The state plays a central role, having launched a "thousand talents'
program, which provides attractive incentives and benefits to those

eir commercial willing to settle and work in China. In late 2017, the Ministry for
clog's nose onto Science and Technology launched a project for "transformative tech-
it investor and nologies," among whose aims is to develop new high-performance
d in particular chips by 2021, in order to power neuronal networks.
;rs of gratitude Unlike earlier large-scale science projects—in biotechnology,
000 criminals, for instance—Beijing knows that the field of artificial intelligence
es, have fallen is too broad, too diverse, and too dynamic to be driven forward ef-
t year, he says, fectively by brute force from the state, with planning bureaucrats
onal Beer Fes-
issuing and pushing through top-down edicts. The contribution of
long time on private high-tech companies and countless start-ups, and their co-
18E • WE HAVE BEEN HARMONIZED
operation with the state, are central to Beijings plans. The govern- sources.
ment is keeping these companies close: the Ministry of Technology more thi
has officially selected firms like Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, and the first payi
speech-recognition company iFlytek to lead the development ofna- is currei
tionwide AI platforms in areas such as self-driving cars, smart cities,

"Thi
medical diagnostics, and speech recognition. This gives the chosen growing
firms an advantage In these markets, with valuable access to state huge, tJ
databases. At the end of 2018 the Chinese Academy for Information lion sui
Technology, a think-tank operated by the Ministry of Industry and 62 mill

too,th(
Information Technology (MIIT), produced a "white paper on AI
security" praising the large private internet companies Alibaba, Ten- they're
cent, Baidu, and Netease for their active contributions to the "intclli- those 1
gentizadon of national social governance," in fields such as "security lion, r
Sensel
monitoring, data investigation, and public opinion control."107
"Vipei
The private sector, generously supported by state funds, has be-
autom
gun to open its own laboratories in Silicon Valley and elsewhere,
tol0(
allowing Chinese companies to woo foreign AI experts with the
promise of great salaries and even greater opportunities. Come to
Tl
China; you can do more there. And you can do it faster. The West
big d
Party
is getting tangled up in legal restrictions and data protection con-
nese
cerns, while China just goes ahead with things. In November 2017,
large
Megvii gathered $460 million in a single round of investment—at
Odys
the time busting the world record for an AI start-up. Since then,
And
the firm's technology has won several competitions, beating teams
from Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. Since 2015, SenseTime's

nify
]
research team has presented more new studies at the world's major
AI conferences than Google or Facebook, and in April 2018 it

mw
nifi1
overtook its competitor Megvii when it brought in $600 million
inte
of new investment, becoming the highest-valued AI start-up in the
Bre
world. Similar start-ups are springing up like mushrooms all over
China. Much of their seed funding comes from state investment

by
THE EYE • 183
lans. The govern- sources. And the money arrives quickly: in China, it takes little
ry of Technology more than nine months for a newly founded start-up to see the
Fencent, and the first payment from the investment funds; in the USA, the average
velopmentofna- is currently just over 15 months.
=ars, smart cities. 'This is just the beginning," says Xie Yinan. "The market is
gives the chosen growing rapidly. Competition doesn't worry us, the demand is
te access to state huge, there's room for everyone." In 2016 there were 176 mil-
for Information lion surveillance cameras in China. At that point, the USA had
of Industry and 62 million—more per head of population than China. But here
ite paper on AI too, the ambitious nature of Chinese plans and the speed at which
es Alibaba, Ten- they're implemented are making China the frontrunner: by 2020
is to the "intelli- those 176 million cameras will have become more than 600 mil-
>uch as "security lion, many of them equipped with AI technology. Very soon,
control."107
SenseTime is planning to invest in five supercomputers, to run the
£ funds, has be- 'Viper" system it has developed. Viper will apparently be able to
and elsewhere, automatically monitor and analyze the data from networks of up
<perts with the to 100,000 cameras.
lities. Come to The Communist Party has discovered a new magic weapon in
ister. The West big data and artificial intelligence—that much was evident from
protection con- Party and state leader Xi Jinpings New Year s address to the Chi-
November 2017, nese people in 2018. As he does every year, Xi sat in front of a
nvestment—at large wall of books; the observant viewer could make out Homer's
ip. Since then, Odyssey and Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea on the shelves.
beating teams And as they do every year, internet users subsequently took a mag-
5, SenseTime's nifying glass to each book spine.
• world s major Many noticed that this year, Xi Jinping had brought The Com-
April 2018 it munist Manifesto and Dos Kapital down within reach. Most sig-
$600 million nificantly, though, for the first time two bestsellers on artificial
start-up in the intelligence had been given a prominent position on the shelves:
•ooms all over Brett King s Augmented was sitting next to The Master Algorithm
te investment by Pedro Domingos. Domingos researches AI at the University of
Washington, and his book invites people to join him in the search
for the algorithm to end all algorithms, an algorithm that will go
on developing itself infinitely. "If it exists," Dorningos writes, "the
Master Algorithm can derive all knowledge in the world—past,
present, and future—from data. Inventing it would be one of the
greatest advances in the history of science."108 Of course, there is
no guarantee that Xi has really read King and Domingos—unlike
Marx.
In the USA, researchers and companies are following China's
plans with curiosity; some are sounding the alarm. They will have
caught up with us by 2025," prophesies Eric Schmidt, who is now

the head of Google's parent company Alphabet and has evidently
studied the State Council document from Beijing. "And by 2030
they'll dominate the industry." Now, one should not take at face
value everything that comes out of the mouths of Chinese plan-
ners, but in the past the Chinese state has shown what it's capa-
ble of when something has been identified as politically desirable.

Take, for example, the rapid creation of the largest high-speed
train network in the world. And the CCP has clearly fixed on arti-
ficial intelligence as the key to its own survival and the perfection
of its rule.
In the field of technology, at least, China is disproving those

skeptics who still think an authoritarian system is poison for any
kind of innovation. "There's this strange belief that you can't build
a mobile app if you don't know the truth about what happened in
Tiananmen Square," Kaiser Kuo once said. Kuo is an American
China-watcher and heavy metal guitarist, who spent many years
as the head of international PR for Baidu in Beijing. Trouble is,

it's not true."109 For a long time now, China has been much more
than a paradise for fake Nikes and alleged Louis Vuitton handbags
with Chanel logos stuck on them. It's also much more than just the
IZED THE EYE • 18S
n him in the search "world's factory": the country with the cheapest labor, assembling
prithm that will go our T Vs and smartphones, the country that makes just $7 out of
rningos writes, "the every $880 iPhone we buy.
n the world—past, After the USA, China has long been number two in the world
wuld be one of the when it comes to spending on research and development, and
Of course, there is according to the latest report by the American National Science
ômingos—unlike Foundation, those positions will soon be reversed. Between 2000
and 2015, China increased its research and development spending

• following Chinas by 18 percent every year. Spending in the USA, by contrast, rose
m. They will have by an average of just 4 percent a year in the same period.110 The
timidt, who is now report also says that since 2003, the number of scientific publica-
and has evidently tions from China has quintupled. China's researchers have now
ng. "And by 2030 outpaced the USA with their supercomputers, at least in terms of
td not take at face the number of such machines that appear in the world s top 500.
> of Chinese plan- In 2020, researchers in the harbor city ofTianjin are planning to
ivn what its capa- bring the first exascale computer into service, which would be ten
)litically desirable. times as fast as today's supercomputers. (The USA hopes its Aurora
argest high-speed project will have reached this point by 2021, a year later.) China
sarly fixed on arti- is also on the heels of the United States when it comes to quan-
ind the perfection turn computer research. And in October 2019, Xi Jinping person-
ally chaired a study session of the Communist Party Politburo on

disproving those blockchain technology, where he stated that China had to set in-
is poison for any ternational standards for blockchain "to increase Chinas influence
at you can't build and rule-making power in the global arena.'5111
vhat happened in Behind the Great Firewall—shielded by the censors not just
3 is an American from the free flow of information, but helpfully also from the
•pent many years competition—a high-tech parallel universe has come into being.
jing. "Trouble is, China is the world s biggest market for e-commerce, and at least in
been much more terms of market value, Alibaba and Tencent have long since moved
/uitton handbags into the same league as Amazon, Alphabet, and Facebook.
lore than Just the In the fields of electronic transactions and the development of
smartphone finance apps, China is way ahead of the rest of the soup for t
world. "You get the sense when you leave China these days that me funny
you are going backward," the Financial Times observed. The eco- Beijing, e
nomic opportunities and the technological leap forward are one scan usin
thing. But just as enticing for the state is an unprecedented oppor- At a

tunity to look inside its citizens' heads, and to monitor them in WeChat
their beds, on the streets, on their shopping trips, and during the submitti
most intimate of conversations. ber 2017

WeChat, for instance, is a phenomenon that doesn't exist WeChat
in the West. The app began as a messaging service; the Chinese cation a
WhatsApp. But for China's mobile phone users, it very quickly the drea
also became the Chinese Facebook. Then the Chinese Uber and every ir
the Chinese Booking.com and the Chinese Deliveroo. On smart- Ten
phones at least, WeChat has to all intents and purposes gobbled up state se
the Chinese internet. You can use WeChat to talk to friends, book conver;
taxis and hotel rooms, order food, buy movie tickets, book trains autom;
and flights, rent city bikes, choose a cable TV package, pay your withoi
water and electricity bills and parking tickets, and get fast credit. structi
Most significantly of all, you can make cashless payments. And all after i
the while, the state security services are looking over your shoul- tween
"haha
der. In 2019, more than a billion Chinese had WeChat installed
on their phones. mont
thug'
Two apps, Tencents WeChat and Alibaba's Alipay, have split
one c
the market for cashless payments between them—and the Chinese
Il
love it. An entire population has switched to mobile payment in
valu(
record time. Hardly anyone uses debit or credit cards any longer—
belie
and hardly anyone carries cash. In 2017, the Chinese used their
of n
phones to make $17 billion worth of transactions. That year, over
60 percent of all cashless transactions worldwide took place in

Chi
Jie:'
China. I could pay with WeChat in the snack bar in my side-
and
street, the grocery store, the hairdresser, and use it to buy noodle
ED
THE EYE • 187
of the rest of the

soup for the equivalent of $1.50. Eventually, people started giving
»a these days that
me funny looks when I reached into my trouser pocket for cash. In
bserved. The eco-
Beijing, even the beggars now use barcodes, which passers-by can
' forward are one
scan using WeChat to make their small donation.
•ecedented oppor-
At a courthouse in the Haidan district of Beijing, you can use
monitor them in
WeChat to submit files and pay fees. The identity of the person
s, and during the
submitting is confirmed via facial recognition.112 And in Decem-
ber 2017 the state press announced pilot projects in 26 cities to test
tiat doesn't exist
WeChat as a state-recognized, electronic social-security identifi-
rice; the Chinese
cation and ID card.113 It's the dream of every lazy citizen. It's also
:, it very quickly
the dream of the surveillance state, which gets news of its citizens'
tiinese Uber and
every move and every transaction delivered for free in real time.
woo. On smart-
Tencent cooperates very closely with the censors, police, and
=>oses gobbled up
state security. During a chat, you might suddenly realize that the
to friends, book
conversation has stopped making sense: certain words are being
rets, book trains
automatically deleted by WeChat between sender and receiver,
^ckage, pay your
without either party being informed. In the city ofPuyang, a con-
^ get fast credit.
struction supervisor named Chen Shouli spent five days in a cell
yments. And all
after forwarding a joke on WeChat about a rumored affair be-
)ver your shoul-
tween a singer and a senior government official, captioned with
7eChsLt installed
'haha." And Wang Jianfeng from Shandong went to prison for 22
months after calling Party leader Xi Jinping a baozi and a "Maoist
lipay, have split
thug" on WeChat. A baozi is a large steamed bun, and has been
ind the Chinese
one of the partly Xl's nicknames for many years.
3ile payment in
In 2017 China had more "unicorns"—start-ups with a market
is any longer_
value of $1 billion or more—than the United States. Some experts
nese used their
believe that China's Huawei is ahead of Apple in the development
That year, over
of mobile AI chips. And, as we've seen, on January 17, 2018, a
' took place in
Chinese computer also managed to win against the Go master Ke
ar in my side-
Jie: Tencent's Fine Art software gave Ke Jie a two-stone head start,
to buy noodle
and still beat him.
But Chinas companies are still weak when it comes to foreign tracks the be
trade, and the country still trails behind the USA in terms of its order to prec
talent pool and total investment in the high-tech area. The Dutch cording to tl
academic publisher Elsevier and Nikkei in Japan publish a list of data is also
the institutions whose AI research is most frequently cited world- fight againsl
wide: two of the top three are now from China, with three in the Some in
top ten. It pays to look beyond the numbers, though. According the Soviet
to Jeffrey Ding, researcher at the University of Oxford's "Govern- China has t
ance ofAI" program, and author of a study on Chinese progress in clear strate;
AI,114 the nation's AI research is no longer lacking in quantity, but of the ign<
it may still lack originality.115 His verdict: "China [. . .] still cannot his govern
match the leading countries in the most innovative research and Beijings Ie
the most talented researchers." Ding's 2018 study presented an "AI which rese
potential index" for the first time, to compare China's AI capac- lions, witl
ities with those of the USA—and the USA still performed twice the oil of
as well. the new S
The USA might still have the lead when it comes to researching to have ac
the principles ofAI, counters Xie Yinan from Megvii, "but in its ing 500 i
practical application, we're already a long way ahead." He pauses, pare 1.5 I
then: "The state doesn't place so many limits on us here . . . Tlie but also
government is behind us." Judges in Hebei Province are already and whc
from th'
getting AI to help them prepare their verdicts, and according to
can cone
the state press, courts and lawyers in Shanghai are using it to check
produce
the quality of evidence, and avoid "convicting innocent people."116
"In Ch^
The city ofHangzhou is using algorithms to predict traffic flow,
times n
and all over the country "smart city" projects are being launched
is 10 tii
in cooperation with firms like Alibaba and Huawei. The CCP,
usage i:
meanwhile, is going even further. In the province of Sichuan, and
On
within its Youth League, the Party is testing a "smart red cloud'
rental
on itself: the Party press says the algorithm is designed to modern-
ment <
ize the way it assesses and chooses its functionaries. The system
THE EYE • 189
it comes to foreign tracks the behavior and "human relationships" of CCP cadres, in
SA in terms of its order to predict "their future ideas and future behavior." And ac-
h area. The Dutch
cording to the Clean Governance Centre at Peking University, big
n publish a list of data is also set to become China's "most powerful weapon in the
lently cited world-
fight against corruption/
with three in the Some in the USA are seeing parallels with the space race against
tough. Accordinf
the Soviet Union, more than half a century ago. And many believe
)xfords "Govern-
China has the advantage: for one thing, while China is focusing on
hinese progress in
clear strategic goals, the USA is foundering under the presidency
g in quantity, but of the ignorant, anti-science Donald Trump. (Trump presented
[• . .] still cannot
his government's AI strategy in February 2019, 19 months after
five research and
Beijing's leaders.) But most important is the sheer mass of data to
presented an "AI
which researchers and companies have access in this nation of bil-
China's AI capac-
lions, with little hindrance from laws or debates about privacy. If
performed twice the oil of the future is data, as the Economist puts it, then China is
the new Saudi Arabia. The camera manufacturer SenseTime claims

ês to researching
to have access, via government departments, to databases contain-
egvii, "but in its
ing 500 million faces. Its competitor Yitu even claims it can com-
ead." He pauses,
pare 1.5 billion faces. That includes not only every Chinese citizen,
us here . ..The
but also every foreigner who has passed through Chinas borders,
'ince are already
and whose features are automatically saved to a central database
nd according to
from the snapshot taken by border officials. No other country
using it to check
can compete" with China's advantages here, according to a paper
ocent people."116
produced by the Beijing technology investor Sinovation Ventures:
'diet traffic flow,
'In China, people use their mobile phones to pay for goods 50
being launched
times more often than Americans. Food delivery volume in China
wei. %e CCP,
is 10 times more than that of the United States. And shared bicycle
ofSichuan, and usage is 300 times that of the US."117
nart red cloud"
On this last point, it is worth knowing that the candy-colored
ned to modern-
rental bikes you find everywhere in China send all their move-
tes. The system
ment and payment data back to a central database. In 2018, the
company Mobike announced that its eight million bikes provided once said,
30 terabytes of data every day. The company not only knows [ts technol
when and where and how fast you are cycling; it also analyzes ^
The Ps
who is cycling with whom. And it shares all that data with the education,
n,
government. technolog
The more data is collected, the more fodder the self-teaching al- same time
gorithms have to perfect themselves. Not all experts agree, though, planners ^
that the sheer mass of data makes other factors, like the quality of can predi
the AI semiconductor technology or the number ofAI experts, un- that migl
important. According to the Oxford University study mentioned ucation,
above, in 2017 there were 78,700 scientists working in the field of operatioi
artificial intelligence in the USA, while in China it was 39,200. the level
The study doesn t rule out the possibility that, for the smarter AI ing the ]
algorithms of the future, access to a greater mass of existing data plan.118 1
might be less important. cast, an<
One advantage China definitely enjoys is the speed and the ture fad
lack of restraint with which it can commit itself to developing this and ps}
technology. "Artificial intelligence was invented in the West," says signific;
the MIT Technology Review, the magazine produced by the elite playing
US university in Massachusetts, "but its future is currently taking bility."
shape on the other side of the world." In May 2018, SenseTime come t
announced a partnership with MIT; SenseTime founder Tang buro n
a.£enci<
Xiao'ou had earned his doctorate there in 1996. His company
was only set up in 2014, and today it's already worth more than had to
more
$7 billion. SenseTime has lured people from MIT, Microsoft, and
centre
Google to work for it in Beijing. "We're still a baby, compared
Fa
to Facebook and Google," says the PR representative Yuan Wei,
to co)
(but our aim is very clear: we want to become world leaders." The
and d
company's Chinese name is Shang Tang, after the first Chinese
the tl
dynasty, Shang (18th to llth century Be) and its first emperor,
Tang. "That was a time when China led the world," Tang Xiao'ou
per f
?ED
THE EYE • 191
ion bikes provided

once said, explaining the choice of name, "and it will again, with
r not only knows
its technological innovations.'
,r; it also analyzes
The Party foresees a wide range of uses for AI. Whether in
tiat data with tlie
education, public health, or infrastructure, the aim is for new
technologies to solve problems and increase productivity. At the

ieseJf-teachin?al-
same time, it wants to use artificial intelligence to provide central
rts agree, though,
planners with a feedback and steering mechanism, with which it
iice the quality of
can predict and prevent any potential economic and social crises
3fAI experts, un-
that might threaten the system. The widespread use ofAI in ed-
study mentioned
ucation, medical care, pensions, environmental protection, urban
"g in the field of
operations, judicial services, and other fields will greatly improve
a it was 39,200.
the level of precision in public services, comprehensively enhanc-
r the smarter AI
ing the people's quality of life," says the first part of the state AI
of existing data
plan.118 It continues: "AI technologies can accurately sense, fore-
cast, and provide early warning of major situations for infrastruc-

^ speed and the
ture facilities and social security operations; grasp group cognition
developing this
and psychological changes in a timely manner; [. . .] which will
the West," says
significantly elevate the capability and level of social governance,
ced by the elite
playing an irreplaceable role in effectively maintaining social sta-
currently taking
bility." AI promises to make the dream of all authoritarian rulers
) 18, SenseTime
come true: control and surveillance of the entire population. Polit-
founder Tam
buro member Chen Yixin, who is responsible for law enforcement
His company
agencies in the country, said in a speech to party officials that they
>rth more than
had to "place the process ofAI governance development in an even
Microsoft, and
more important position, elevating it as an important means of
aby, compared control."119
ive Yuan Wei,
Facial recognition has made the most headlines when it comes
^ leaders." The
to control. Universities are using it to check student attendance,
' first Chinese
and dispensers in Beijings Temple of Heaven are using it to ensure
first emperor,
the thrifty use of toilet paper: the machine releases 60cm of paper
Tang Xiaoou
per face. Anyone who requires more has to wait nine minutes
before another 60cm are granted. The Shenzhen police advertised ally does hav<
the fact that they had solved a case of child abduction within 15 with the sch<
hours thanks to facial-recognition cameras. In the same city, the the library.
metro trains have cameras installed in every car, which can monitor faces to buy
'every inch of the train in ultra-high definition," as the South data and fa(
China Morning Post reported. "Not only can passengers' every "students to
move be closely watched, but their most subtle facial expressions admits that
are being captured and transmitted in the form of ultra-clear as much: ^
images, without any delay whatsoever."120 school bool
The transport police in Shanghai are using intelligent cameras are gone:
to catch people driving without a license; registry office clerks in you consta]
Chongqing are exposing people who commit marriage fraud; and Years a
the police in Jinan and Shenzhen are publicly shaming people who work of ec
cross the street when the lights are red. Their faces appear in real irony or re
time on a video screen at the side of the road—together with their AI organi;
name, address, and ID number. At a single crossing in the district Skynet, tl
ofFujian, the cameras caught no fewer than 13,930 people in the In March
space of ten months. Very soon, rule-breakers will start receiving the Skyne
automatic texts to their mobile phones, telling them off and warn- lion citize
ing them that next time, they are liable to be punished. prosecuti
Middle School No. 11 in Hangzhou drew enthusiastic atten- present n
tion from the press when it had "eyes in the sky" installed in every chines ar
classroom: surveillance cameras with a continuous view of every

The \
student. They are all-knowing eyes; nothing gets past them. As ferent. A
soon as someone nods off or starts daydreaming, he is captured on brought
the spot, using facial recognition," said an article on Sina.com. Ac- ognitior
matter i
cording to the article, the cameras not only capture how often dur-
ing the eight-hour school day a student s mind wanders; they also
the FBI
'analyze facial expression and mood—whether someone is happy,

for crin
affectec
sad, annoyed, or reluctant—and send the data straight to a termi-
sequeir
nal that analyzes the student's attitude to learning. The system re-
ED
THE EYE • 193
police advertised
ally does have magic powers. The school has long since done away
uction witliin 15
with the school card that students used to use for the cafeteria or
he same city, the
the library. Students scan their faces to get food, they scan their
hich can monitor
faces to buy things, and they scan their faces to borrow books." Big
n," as the South
data and facial recognition, according to the report, are helping
>assengers' every
"students to study more efficiently." A student named Xiao Qian
acial expressions
admits that he used to be a bit lazy in the lessons he didn't enjoy
^ of ultra-clear
as much: "You might close your eyes for a minute or read another
school book under the desk." With the eyes in the sky, those days
eiligent cameras
are gone: "Now you feel the gaze of a pair of mysterious eyes on
r office clerks in
you constantly, and no one dares to go ofF-task any longer.'
"age fraud; and
Years ago, China's police force christened its nationwide net-
nng people who work of cameras "Skynet"—quite probably without any hint of
s appear in real
irony or reference to the Terminator films, where Skynet is a rogue
£ther with their
AI organism on a mission to wipe out the human race. Chinas
^ in the district
Skynet, the press reported, is the eyes that watch over China.
0 people in the
In March 2018, a tweet from the People's Daily claimed that now,
start receiving
the Skynet was "capable of identifying any one of China s 1.4 bil-
1 ofFandwarn-
lion citizens within a second," and was thus helping "the police in
tied.
prosecuting crimes." Masks, hats, sunglasses, even plastic surgery
msiastic atten-
present no problem these days, claim Megvii and SenseTime. "Ma-
bailed in every
chines aren't as easy to fool as people are.'
view of every
The USA'S experience with this technology has been rather dif-
past them. As
ferent. An investigation by the Government Accountability Office
is captured on
brought to light such serious deficiencies in the FBI'S facial rec-
Sina.com. Ac-
ognition program that in March 2017 there was a hearing on the
ow often dur-
matter in the House of Representatives. In 15 percent of all cases,
ters; they also
the FBI'S technology identified the wrong people when searching
•one is happy,
for criminals, with black women being the most likely group to be
ht to a termi-
affected by these errors. Such false alarms have more serious con-
he system re-
sequences in the Chinese system than they might elsewhere, since
was the first of the

the conviction rate is over 99.9 percent. The state apparatus is al-
so-called Health C
ways right, and where evidence is lacking, the police often provide
the apps were quic
the court with a forced confession elicited with threats or torture.
rive smartphone
We can assume the system is still a long way from being all-
state of health of
encompassing: databases that often don't communicate with each
taurants, and hote
other; firms that overstate their achievements; technology that
clients: only peopl
promises more than it can currently deliver. And yet all the over-
be healthy and nc
blown claims—that the cameras can identify someone at a dis-
A yellow code in
tance of 15 kilometers, or that everyone can be identified within
home in isolation
a second—still make sense. The all-seeing eye doesn't have to be
tential or confirm
looking at you for the panopticon to function. All that matters is
andned. In addil
that you feel it might be—even if in reality, it isn't there yet.
Chinese people
Chinas cities are already the most monitored in the world. In
According to stat
2019, a study by the Comparitech web portal counted eight Chi-
withWeChat'st
nese cities among the ten cities across the globe with the most
Some of the
surveillance cameras per capita.122 (London came in sixth, Atlanta
themselves (sign
tenth.) Chongqing was in first place with 2.6 million cameras in-
information pro
stalled (168 per 1,000 inhabitants), and in second place was Shen-
history as recor
zhen with 159 cameras per 1,000 inhabitants. However, the report
when and who
highlighted the plans of the Shenzhen city government to increase
ie
who are on the
the number of its nearly 1.9 million cameras to almost 17 mil-
are penalized
lion in the next few years—this with a population of just under
rovernment
13 million people. After the outbreak of the coronavirus, two
"fraud, conceal
companies, SenseTime and Megvii, were quick to market thermal
would have "a 1
cameras that combine fever measurement of passers-by with face
around these c
recognition. By the end of March 2020, the cameras were already
are programm<
ubiquitous in the subway stations, schools, and shopping mails of
without the kr
major cities. SenseTime claimed that its cameras could identify
many cases ca
faces "with relatively high accuracy" even behind the face masks
ended up beii
that were omnipresent at the time.
or how to gel
At the height of Chinas coronavirus crisis, Alibaba in Hangzhou
THE EYE • 195
^ratus is al- was the first of the country's major internet companies to develop
ften provide so-called Health Code apps for the authorities. Others Followed and
or torture. the apps were quickly deployed throughout the country. These apps
n being all- give smartphone users a green, yellow, or red code indicating the
e with each state of health of the user. Guards at subways, shopping mails, res-
lology that taurants, and hotels constantly checked the codes of passengers and
ill the over- clients: only people with a green code, those who were considered to
le at a dis- be healthy and not infected, were allowed to move relatively freely.
fied within A yellow code in most places meant that the person should be at
have to be home in isolation. And people with a red code were considered po-
t matters is tential or confirmed carriers of a virus infection and should be quar-

'e yet. antined. In addition to Alibabas Alipay version of the app, many
e world. In Chinese people used the WeChat's version developed by Tencent.
eight Chi- According to state media, in April 900 million people had registered
1 the most with WeChat's Health Code app.
th, Atlanta Some of the information in the app is provided by the users
-'ameras in- themselves (signs of coughing or fever). Additionally, the app uses
was Shen- information provided by the authorities (medical records) and travel
the report history as recorded by the smartphone: who has been where and
to increase when and who has had contact with whom for how long. People
•st 17 mil- who are on the move even though they have been classified as red
just under are penalized with an entry in their social credit system file. The
virus, two government of Heilongjiang Province, for example, is threatening

et thermal 'Fraud, concealment, and other behaviors" with punishments that
' with face would have "a huge impact on their future life and work. Concerns
're already around these apps were not only caused by reports that the apps
g mails of are programmed to forward information directly to state authorities
d identify without the knowledge of the users, but also by the fact that they in
ace masks many cases came to the wrong conclusions: some healthy Chinese
ended up being assigned a red code, without any indication why

"ângzh ou or how to get rid of it. At the same time, however, a large part of
the population participated voluntarily and eagerly. In this case, the Legal Affa
lofty goal of public health gave a further boost to the normalization paper Qii
of high-tech surveillance by tracking tools—a development that we of basic ii
also witnessed in the West a few months later. However, unlike in tracking t
China, in most European countries tracking by coronavims health and what
apps is at least passionately discussed and accompanied by legal system m
restrictions. our strike
In China, tracking tools and the Skynet are just part of a much ber Menj
more comprehensive "police cloud," on which the organization to remov
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has reported.123 The police cloud sible, he
is a project from the Ministry of Public Security, which issued the cour
instructions for its use in 2015. Since then police forces in various Men
provinces have been gathering all the data they can on hundreds large bu
of millions of citizens: medical histories, takeout orders, courier ordinatc
deliveries, supermarket loyalty card numbers, methods of birth of the a
control, religious affiliations, online behavior, flights and train thoritie
journeys, GPS movement coordinates, and biometric data, face, islands
voice, fingerprints—plus the DNA of some forty million Chinese office s
people, foremost among them the Uighurs in Xinjiang. The state lower l<
press reported, for instance, that the police force in the city ofXu- All
zhou in Jiangsu was buying information from private companies, and T<
including "navigation data on the internet, [and] the logistical, in adv

somet'
purchase and transaction records of major e-commerce compa-
nies,"124 but also the MAC addresses of the devices through which scienc
individual internet users could be identified. "Officers used to go Repor\

A<
house to house to gather information," the article says. Today, the
machines collect it tirelessly throughout the day."125 Since 2019, a pro;
you cannot be issued a SIM card if your phone is without a regis- pro] ei
as an
tered facial scan.
Ever
'Big data shows us the future," wrote Wang Yongqing (at the
mob;
time general secretary of the powerful Party Central Political and
ED
THE EYE • 197
V. In this case, the

Legal Affairs Commission) in 2015, in the Central Party School's
the normalization
paper Qiushi.126 TTie Party had to "assemble a complete collection
relopment that we
of basic information about all places, things, issues, and people,
owever, unlike in
tracking trends in what they eat, how they live, where they travel,
oronavims health
and what they consume. All this would make our early-warning
npanied by legal
system more scientific, our defense and control more effective, and
our strikes more precise. Wang's boss at the time, Politburo mem-
st part of a much
ber Meng Jianzhu, called on the security services in autumn 2017
the organization
to remove all barriers to a broad exchange of data: as soon as pos-
Fhe police cloud
sible, he said, the images from surveillance cameras everywhere in
-7, which issued
the country needed to flow into a single database.
forces in various
JVteng's exhortation alludes to the age-old problem faced by
an on hundreds
large bureaucracies, especially in authoritarian systems: each sub-
orders, courier
ordinate authority reproduces the secrecy and lack of transparency
ethods of birth
of the apparatus in miniature, partitioning itself ofF from the au-
ights and train
thorkies alongside it. The recurring complaint about isolated "data
stric data, face,
islands" urgently needing to be joined up suggests that the head-
nillion Chinese
office strategists had a tough job implementing their plans on the
Jiang. The state
lower levels.
the city ofXu-
All the same: AI, said Li Meng, Deputy Minister for Science
ate companies,
and Technology, in summer 2017, would help China to know
the logistical, in advance who might be a terrorist, and who might be planning
^merce compa-
something bad." Prophesying future crimes used to be the stuff of
Arough which
science fiction novels and films, like Steven Spielberg's Minority
;ers used to go
Report. In China, they're trying to make it reality.
^s. "Today, the
As early as 2016, the Shandong Legal Daily was reporting on
25 Since 2019,
a project being run by the police in the city of Dongying.127 The
rithout a regis-
project is called "Mornings at Eight" and is cited by the paper
as an excellent example of how to use the police cloud creatively.
tigqing (at the Every morning at eight o'clock, the system sends a report to the
1 Political and
mobile phones of the 1,300 participating police officers, detailing
the abnormalities and trends seen in their area. The algorithm, just drug ad
so the paper says, analyzes the data from the previous day, includ- titioners, i
ing information from hotels, internet cafes, airlines—and from the disturbance
police force itself. It scans all data on any newcomers to the dis- words, peo]
trict, for instance, including their hometown, ethnicity, previous party's side
convictions, and online behavior, harvested from internet cafes. don't knew
'Every day at eight o'clock [. . .] the system sends us targeted mes- To mat
sages," the paper quoted a police officer as saying. "In particular, ment is get
it alerts us to individuals who are involved in terrorism and in The Chim

[undermining] social stability who ve entered our jurisdictions.' firm Hikv
Itinerant laborers and ethnic minorities appear as people of in- now the \i
terest in these alerts with particular frequency. The HRW report world. To<
quotes a tender document from the Tianjin police, which says its 150 coun
police cloud can monitor "people of certain ethnicity," people send an a
who have extreme thoughts," "petitioners who are extremely [per- In the U1
sistent]," and "Uighurs from South Xinjiang." The system, accord- 2019.In 1
ing to this document, "says it can pinpoint the residences of these military:
individuals and track their movements on maps.' Even the
The question is: what is a crime? And who may find them- Theii
selves attracting unwelcome attention in a country where someone London.
like the late author and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo is Chinas
viewed by the authorities as a mere convicted criminal ? while tl:
The aim of all the data-gathering by the Chinese police, ac- ladonsh
cording to a 2014 notice from the ministry of public security, is Zongni
to create an "early warning" system that will alert them to any was a d
'abnormal behavior" by citizens. Sophie Richardson, the China Some $
director at Human Rights Watch, says the authorities "are col- with a
enablec
lecting and centralizing ever more information about hundreds
the ex'
of millions of ordinary people, identifying persons who deviate
same, ^
from what they determine to be 'normal thought.'" Ministry
Wood
documents single out groups to be identified and targeted: not
THE EYE • 139
êa. The algorithm.

drug addicts and people with criminal records, but also "pe-
'previous day, includ-
titioners," "those with mental health problems who tend to cause
irlines—and from the
disturbances," and "those who undermine stability." In other
ewcomers to the dis-
words, people who, for one reason or another, are a thorn in the
n, ethnicity, previous
Party's side. Or who might become one, even if they themselves
from internet cafes.
don't know it yet. Especially them, in fact.
•nds us targeted mes-
To make absolutely sure that nothing goes wrong, the govern-
lying. "In particular.
ment is getting directly involved with some of the new companies.
in terrorism and in
The Chinese state is the majority shareholder in the Hangzhou
our Jurisdictions."
firm Hikvision, which began life in a state research institute and is
•pear as people ofin-
now the largest manufacturer of video surveillance systems in the
7. The HRW report
world. Today, Hikvision cameras have been installed in more than
'olice, which says its
150 countries, where they identify faces and license plates, and
ethnicity," "people
send an automatic alert when a driver is seen texting at the wheel.
> are extremely [per-
In the UK, 1.3 million cameras from the company were in use in
The system, accord-
2019. In the USA, prisons, airports, schools, private dwellings, and
3 residences of these
military institutions are equipped with the Chinese firm's systems.
)S."
Even the US embassy in Kabul installed one.
io may find them-
Their use has caused much debate in both Washington and
itry where someone
London. Critics point to the fact that Hikvision works closely with
reate Liu Xiaobo is
China's Ministry of Public Security and its research institutions,
criminal"?
while the company has frequently tried to draw a veil over its re-
Chinese police, ac-
lationship with the Chinese regime. Its managing director, Chen
public security, is
Zongnian, is also the firms Party secretary, and in March 2018 he
alert them to any
was a delegate to the National People s Congress for the first time.
ardson, the China
Some suspect that Hikvision may have equipped its technology
tthorities "are col-
with a "back door," which would allow China to access its internet-
n about hundreds
enabled cameras and channel their data to Chinese servers. So far,
.'sons who deviate
the existence of these back doors hasn't been proven, but all the
)ught.5" Ministry
same, the US embassy in Kabul and a military base in Fort Leonard
and targeted: not
Wood, Missouri, have now removed all their Hikvision cameras.
Recently the company attracted attention because it adver- damage to a n\
tised a camera model on its website that could not only determine tion was that
the gender of those photographed, but also "with a hit rate of at Chinese "orga
least 90 percent" automatically recognize whether the subjects with the work
are Uighur.128 The New York Times had already revealed in April This docu
2019 that China was the first country in the world to use artifi- basis to som<
cial intelligence for racial profiling.129 Concurrently, companies has never pc
such as Yitu, Megvii, Sensitive, and CloucTWalk have been work- of the word.
ing to improve their surveillance camera Uighur-recognition al- Communist
gorithms. According to the New York Times, such software is to his execu
already being used in cities such as Hangzhou and Wenzhou, Times. Ou
and in the city ofSanmenxia, 500,000 passers-by were screened interna-tion;
over the course of a single month to determine whether they were In the si
Uighurs. "If originally one Uighur lives in a neighborhood, and listed in th<
within 20 days six Uighurs appear, CloudWalk said on its web- Reuters ne\
site, it immediately sends alarms" to law enforcement. In Oc- structuring
death;5130 "
tober 2019, the companies named in the New York Times article
were then placed on the United States Entity List" for the hu- the Huawe
man rights violations in Xinjiang. The blacklist severely restricts Dominate
American trade with the companies concerned. For ambitious Many
start-ups like SenseTime and Megvii, this is a setback in their overseas n
efforts to expand worldwide. tek. Chin
The telecommunications company Huawei landed on the entity

China/' s
list a few months earlier. Huawei found itself caught up in the back other ban
understai
door debate: Triggered by warnings from the USA, governments
with arti
all over the Western world started discussing whether Huawei re-
the laws
ally should be used as a supplier for the coming 5G networks—the
infrastructure of the future—or whether that was inviting the risk factures
"Put it it
of Chinese espionage or even sabotage. In a series of interviews, the
it wiU ^
Huawei boss Ren Zhengfei assured everyone of his company's inde-
voice-cc
pendence from the Chinese government. Huawei will "never cause
THE EYE • 201
because it adver-
damage to a nation or an individual," he said. What he didn't men-
3t only determine
tion was that Chinas intelligence-service law from 2017 obliges all
th a hit rate of at
Chinese "organizations and citizens" to "support, aid, and cooperate
cher the subjects
with the work of the national secret service/
revealed in April
This document was merely a move by the CCP to give a legal
)rld to use artifi-
basis to something that had always happened, in a system that
;ntly, companies
has never permitted companies to be independent in our sense
have been work-
of the word. "In China, state that Huawei strongly supports the
r-recognition al-
Communist Party of China," says one internal notice from Ren
>uch software is
to his executives, written in 2014 and quoted in the Financial
and Wenzliou,
Times. "Outside China, stress that Huawei always follows key
>y were screened
international trends/
icther they were
In the summer of 2019, a few months after Huawei was black-
?hborhood, and
listed in the United States, a memo from Ren was leaked to the
said on its web-
Reuters news agency, in which he commits the workforce to a re-
cement. In Oc-
structuring of global business and a persistent struggle for life or
rk Times article
death."130 "After we survive the most critical moment in history/
ist for the hu-
the Huawei boss wrote, "a new army would be born. To do what?
everely restricts
Dominate the world/
For ambitious
Many other Chinese high-tech companies are penetrating
etbaclc in their
overseas markets. In the province ofAnhui, you can visit IFly-
tek, China's number one in voice recognition. "Today, we lead

sd on the entity
China," says a banner in the lobby, "tomorrow, the world." An-
up in the back other banner reads: "Let the machines listen and speak, let them
^ governments
understand and analyze. Let us build a beautiful new world
êr Huawei re-
with artificial intelligence." Like Huawei, iFlytek follows both
networks—the
the laws of commerce and those of the police state. It manu-
iviting the risk
factures intelligent speakers, similar to Amazon's Alexa system.
interviews, the
'Put it in your apartment," says the guide in the showroom, and
wipanys inde-
it will hear everything, no matter where you are." It provides
11 "never cause
voice-control technology for cars made by VW and Mercedes.
Our guide points to large photos of Xi Jinping, who made a ^bet, and Xi
success
personal visit to the firm. We have the support of the govern-
ment," says Pan Shuai, the head of overseas sales. When the US a while, the s;
president Donald Trump visited Beijing, a video clip produced ation with the
by the firm went viral: I love China, says a real-looking Trump the company i
in fluent Chinese: "iFlytek is really super!' "We help witl
China has 800 million internet users and 1.4 billion mobile already in wi
phones. iFlytek works with all three of the major mobile operators, the company
running their call centers—and according to the company's own Shanghai ne\
"If our syster
information, it has made its voice recognition software available
to more than 370,000 apps free of charge. "Every day we have

ically," P^n S
4.5 billion users accessing our services," says Pan Shuai. "Our huge
population gives us enormous advantages in data gathering." Of
course, they don't break any laws, he adds, but: "China is the Wild iFlytek also
its role in h;
West right now. A test laboratory/
region. Lib
And what about their cooperation with the policing ministry?
Pan Shuai hesitates. "I don't know anything about that," he says. But
also had a
of Technol
it's on the company's website—albeit only the Chinese-language
Rutgers an
version: iFlytek runs a laboratory for artificial intelligence and
partnershi{
voice recognition jointly with the Ministry of Public Security. The
There i
company has developed keyword-spotting technology for public
rest of the
security and to aid national defense, the website says. They are also
a region tl
helping the authorities to compile a national speech-pattern and
In some d
voice database.
mitter in
iFlytek boss Liu Qingfeng is also a delegate to the National
your face
People's Congress in Beijing, and in that capacity he used a 2014
declared
speech to call on the authorities "to employ big data in the fight
follow yo
against terrorism as soon as possible, in the interests of national
been ide;
security, and to begin compiling a nationwide speech-pattern da-
the cam^
tabase at once." The company's website says that they've already
meters o
helped the police to "solve crimes" in the provinces of Gansu,
THE EYE • 203
,r, who made a

Tibet, and Xinjiang. Its voice-recognition systems have also
of the govern- proven successful in the Tibetan and Uighur languages. After
When the US a while, the sales manager Pan Shuai recalls the firm's cooper-
clip produced ation with the police. "Oh, right," he says, "that." Yes, it's true,
coking Trump the company is also making its technology available to the police.
"We help with telephone scams, for instance." The technology is
billion mobile already in widespread use in the telephone networks of Anhui,
=>bile operators, the company s home province, according to a 2017 report on the
ompanys own Shanghai news website The Paper. It scans all calls in real time.
-"ware available
'If our system recognizes a criminal, it alerts the police automat-
y day we have ically," Pan Shuai says proudly.
lai. "Our huge
gathering." Of
ina is the Wild IFIytek also landed on the American entity list in 2019 because of
its role in high-tech surveillance of the Uighurs and the Xinjiang
=mg ministry? region. Like the face recognition company SenseTime, iFlytek
t, he says. But also had a research partnership with the Massachusetts Institute
nese-Janguage of Technology; additionally iFlytek funded big data research at
diligence and Rutgers and Princeton. Meanwhile, MIT has pulled out of the
Security. The partnership.
>gy for public There is a province in China that is a few steps ahead of the
They are also rest of the country in using all the surveillance technologies. It is
i-pattern and
a region that now has a police station every few hundred meters.
In some districts you have to install a state-monitored GPS trans-

ttie National mitter in your car, if you own one. You can only buy gas once
s used a 2014 your face has been scanned at the gas station and the system has
a in the fight declared you harmless. In every city, town, and village, cameras
s of national follow your every move, thanks to infrared technologies. If you ve
ti-pattern da-
been identified as a potential troublemaker, then in some places
eyve already the cameras will send an alert as soon as you stray more than 300
-as of Gansu,
meters outside the "safe zone" that has been designated for you. If
you own a mobile phone, you must install the Jingwang ("clean nese in Xii
net") app on it. This app has access to the content of your phone according
and, according to the government, is supposed to "prevent peo- ment docu
pie from accessing terrorist information." It detects all "damaging Cables") y
information" and "illegal religious activity" in the form of text ration witl
messages, e-books, websites, images, and videos, and automatically ists. Xl Jln
reports them to the authorities. the New

show "abs
At the countless police checkpoints you have to pass through
several times a day in this province, officers scan your face with
ofXinjiar
their smartphones, then check your phone to see if you really have office in .
"round u
downloaded Jingwang. In addition, some of the checkpoints are
the authc
equipped with special technology that extracts information such as
who call
MAC addresses and IMEI numbers from cell phones and relevant
reported
devices without their owners ever noticing. If you buy a kitchen
or who i
knife, a QR-code assigned to you will be stamped on the blade
at the point of sale.131 The. authorities know how often you go to
pious frc
beard), i
prayers, whether you have friends or relatives abroad, and whether
(such as
you know anyone who has been to prison. All this is stored on your
chance
file, along with your fingerprints, your blood type, scans of your
so-ca-lle
iris, and samples of your DNA, which the government takes at
ument 1
free health check-ups without informing you of what will happen
follow!:
to them. (The construction of the police force's DNA database
relative
relies on technology provided by the American company Thermo
"Has a
Fisher, as the New York Times recently revealed.) The sum of all
they
this information determines whether you are permitted to stay in
counti
hotels, rent a flat, or get a job. Or whether you end up in one of the
becau*
many re-education camps set up all over the province.
Oi
All this will apply to you if you re a Muslim living in Xinjiang
is the
Province, which in all likelihood means you're a Uighur. In 2016,
tificia
the party leadership ordered a People's War Against Terrorism
citize
after a series of violent clashes between Uighurs and Han Chi-
THE EYE • EDS
>rwang ("clean nese in Xinjiang and terrorist attacks in Beijing and Kunming,
>i-your phone according to a massive trove of a leaked internal Chinese govern-
prevent peo- ment documents related to the oppression of Uighurs (the "China
II "damaginE Cables") published in late 2019 by the New York Times in collabo-
form of text ration with the International Consortium of Investigative Journal-
lutomatically ists. Xi Jinping personally ordered in a secret speech, published by
the New York Times, that the "organs of the dictatorship" should
pass through show absolutely no mercy."132 Chen Quanguo, the new CP chief
>ur face with of Xinjiang, appealed to Xi Jinping and immediately after taking
•u really have office in Xinjiang in August 2016, instructed security officials to
'ckpoints are 'round up everyone who should be rounded up." Under Chen,
ation such as the authorities started to destroy mosques and cemeteries. Anyone
and relevant who calls their child Mohammed or Fatima must expect to be
uy a kitchen reported to the police, as well as those who fast during Ramadan
^n the blade or who invite too many people to your wedding. If someone is too
:n you go to pious from the party's point of view (it is enough if he has grown a
ind whether beard), if he emails or calls relatives abroad, if he has banned apps
~>red on your (such as WhatsApp) installed on his cell phone, there is a good
;ans of your chance that he will end up in a re-education camp. In fact the
ent takes at so-called Karakax-list, another internal Chinese government doc-
will happen ument leaked to Western media in the beginning of 2020, lists the
Â database following "crimes" as reasons for detention and re-education: "Has
iny Thermo relatives abroad," "Has communicated with someone abroad,'
• sum of all 'Has a minor religious infection." Others were interned because
d to stay in they "had applied for a passport but did not actually leave the
n one of the country," had a "complicated network of relationships," or merely
because their "thinking is hard to grasp.'

in Xinjiang One of the most powerful tools of mass surveillance in Xinjiang
ir. In 2016, is the "Integrated Platform for Joint Operations—IJOP—an ar-
Terrorism" tificial intelligence system that collects data about all ofXinjiang's
Han Chi- citizens and then, plugging that data into its algorithms, alerts the
SOB • WE HAVE BEEN HARMONIZED
authorities about potential suspects. The platform comes with an lations to sus\
app that allows police officers on the street to directly compare the abroad are c
facial and ID information ofpassers-bywith the central database. It is the si
son has acce;

The system s hunger for data is insatiable. Xinjiang officials should
collect IJOP data "from everyone in every household," according a job, whetb
to documents Human Rights Watch made public in 2019.133 (The he is placed
IJOP software had been leaked to HRW, which in turn had it the province
"Docum
broken down and analyzed by Berlin programmers using reverse
engineering techniques.) The IJOP system is produced and oper- IJOP systen
ated by a subsidiary of the arms supplier China Electronics Tech- in June 201
to a camp f
nology Group Corporation (CETC). In 2016, CETC announced
Starting
at a press conference that the company was developing big data
gulag, into
systems on behalf of the government that would identify potential
Adrian Ze
terrorists in advance.134 "It's very crucial to examine the cause af-
without h;
ter an act of terror," said chief engineer Wu Manning. "But what
speak to a
is more important is to predict the upcoming activities." Two
friend in a
years later, the company signed a "strategic cooperation" agree-
in other c
ment with the German Siemens group, which Siemens says opens
governme
'a new chapter in the digitization of China's electronics Informa-
time, but
tion industry. 135
new strati
According to the IJOP documents, anyone who deviates from
"vocatior
what the party and its algorithm consider "normal" is considered
and joun
a possible threat. The system reports as suspicious, for example,
they wit)
those citizens ofXinjiang who "keep a distance from their neigh-
ghur iisv
bars" or "who do not like to use the front door of their home.
pressing
The same is true for people who move away from their registered
from tb
place of residence without a police permit, who have "unusually
camps ^?
high" power consumption, and who use a phone or a car that isn't
the drac
their own. People whose phone goes offline longer, or whose GPS
after ds
transmitter installed in the car suddenly no longer reports to the
an<
authorities, also become suspects. Additionally, those who have re-
THE EYE • E07
rm comes with an lations to suspects already under observation or "to people who are
rcctly compare the abroad" are classified as "problematic.'
e central database. It is the sum of all this information that decides whether a per-
ng officials should son has access to hotels, whether he can rent an apartment or get
•ehold," according a job, whether he is ordered to stop visiting public places, whether
icin20l9.I33(The he is placed under house arrest, and whether he ends up in one of
ch in turn had it the province s many re-education camps.
ners using reverse 'Document No. 14" of the "China Cables" reveals how the
oduced and oper- IJOP system identified 24,412 "suspicious" people in a single week
Electronics Tech- in June 2017 in southern Xinjiang, of whom 15,683 were then sent
-ETC announced to a camp for "training and education. 3
sloping big data Starting in spring 2017, China took just one year to create a
identify potential gulag, into which (according to research by the German sinologist
line the cause af- Adrian Zenz) a million or more people have already vanished—
ining. "But what without having committed any crime. "Today, it's impossible to
activities." Two speak to a Uighur who doesn't have at least one close relative or
operation" agree-
friend in a camp," Adrian Zenz told me. "Any contact with people
smens says opens in other countries is almost a guarantee you'll be sent there." The
tronics Informa- government in Beijing denied the existence of the camps for a long
time, but when satellite images proved otherwise, they adopted a
ho deviates from new strategy: the camps, they explained, were in fact "schools" and
a!" is considered 'vocational training centers." Handpicked groups of diplomats
us, for example, and journalists were taken on carefully stage-managed visits where
rom their neigli- they witnessed productions of colorfully costumed and happy Ui-
of their home." ghur "students" singing and dancing, and then in interviews ex-
» their registered pressing their deep gratitude to the Party for having saved them
have "unusually from the dangerous path of extremism. Former inmates from the
>r a car that isn't camps who later fled abroad meanwhile continued to report about
r, or whose GPS the draconian details of the re-education programs in which, day
ar reports to the after day, they had to pledge allegiance to the Communist Party
^se who have re-
and Xi Jinping and swear off their own religion and culture. Some
)redictive p
told of torture, rape, and forced labor. A police officer from Kuchar
County actually told Radio Free Asia at the end of 2019 that 150 is already a
creasingly I:
people had died in one of the camps outside Kuchar city over a
six-month period.137 Xinjiang, t
technical S1
The publication of the China Cables in November 2019 finally
Zenz sees a
proved the existence of the largest internment of an ethnic-religious
minority since the Nazi era.138 The secret documents from the Xin- to obey, to
China
jiang authorities described in detail the "schools" as sealed-off,
strictly guarded camps, fenced in with barbed wire and watchtow-

for examp
abroad, a:
ers, and geared toward political indoctrination. Doors had to be
Telekom.
'double locked" a document instructed, and video surveillance was
to be complete and free from blind spots to "prevent escapes." The

Xinjiang
oratory f(
documents speak of a. punishment-and-reward system and reveal
authoritit
that all inmates must be held in the camps for at least one year. Pris-
regional
oners are rated according to a points system: plus points are given for
surveilla:
'ideological transformation," too many minus points automatically
use in tt
prolong detention. The task of re-education, according to another
In Chin;
government document from Xinyuan County, is to "wash the brains
all, as tl
and cleanse the hearts, promote the right and eliminate evil."139
growing
Not only has the Party turned Xinjiang into an enormous
mainter
camp—it is also making the province into a testing ground for its
the batl
AI gadgets. At the start of 2019 the Dutch security expert Victor
ner" in
Gevers discovered a dataset that the Shenzhen Facial-recognition
to the :
firm SenseNets had parked, unprotected, online. It contained sur-
mony }
veillance data on more than 2.5 million Xinjiang residents, with
point a
their names and ID numbers. In a period of just 24 hours, these
gion ft
people—mostly Uighurs—had been logged at 6.7 million position
the di^
points (mosque, internet cafe, hotel), evidently using data gathered
every
from AI cameras.
tant e
Today Xinjiang is the high-tech version of the Cultural Rev-
force,
olution," says Adrian Zenz. "The trend is toward automation, and
THE EYE • BOS
icerfromKuchar predictive policing. Just as China is overtaking the USA, Xinjiang

of 2019 that 150 is already a long way ahead of the rest of China." Arrests are in-
ichar city over a creasingly being carried out to fulfill quotas, claims Zenz. And in
Xinjiang, the decision to arrest someone is increasingly made by
iber 2019 finally technical systems; police officers don't check each individual case.
i etlinic-religious Zenz sees a clear strategy at work: the aim is to make citizens rush
ts from the Xin- to obey, to internalize the controls, to self-censor."140
s" as sealed-ofF, China's high-tech giants are getting in on the action. Huawei,
s and watchtow- for example, which for some time now has made half its revenue
)oors had to be abroad, and supplies, among others, Vodaphone and Deutsche
surveillance was Telekom. In May 2018, the company started working with the
nt escapes." The Xinjiang police. It has since been involved in an innovation lab-
stem and reveal oratory for the "intelligent security industry" being set up by the
st one year. Pris- authorities in Urumqi, Xinjiangs capital. The stated aim of the
nts are given for regional government is to create an industrial park for high-tech
ts automatically surveillance technology—technology that can not only be put to
^ng to another use in the local area, but also exported to the countries involved
wash the brains in Chinas "New Silk Road" (or Belt and Road Initiative ). After
late evil."139
all, as the Urumqi government website explains, there is also a
> an enormous growing market in other countries for "anti-terror and stability
? ground for its maintenance products."141 The site welcomes a "new soldier" to
y expert Victor the battle for "a peaceful Xinjiang": Huawei will be a "close part-
;ial-recognition ncr" in "technological" and "digitalized" police work. According
contained sur-
to the report, the Huawei executive present at the opening cere-
residents, with many for the innovation laboratory, Tao Jingwen—who at that
}A hours, these point also happened to be President of the Western European Re-
lillion position gion for Huawei—explained that the company wanted to bring
? data gathered the digital world into every organization, into every family and to
every person." Without doubt, "public security is the most impor-

Cultural Rev- tant element in this strategy." Together with the province's police
tomation, and force, they would "ring in a new era of smart police work." This
aiO • WE HAVE BEEN HARMONIZED
is the same Huawei that abroad insists on its independence from sion? "Uninte
the Communist Party, its representatives firmly claiming that )Cu Bing—wl
the company does not do any direct business with the Xinjiang down all the
security authorities: We remain in the commercial space," said and asked pe
Huawei's global cybersecurity manager, John Suffolk. This not Industry
only contradicts the cooperation in Urumqi described above; ac- the country
cording to a new study by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute Chinese are
(ASPI) of further Huawei activities in Xinjiang, the company also claimed Bai
worked with the Karamay police on cloud computing projects are preparec
and cooperated with the Aksu Prefecture Public Security Bureau here often £
modular data centers. 2 But is it re
In the preschools of Urumqi, all children under the age of six Chinese cu
receive a free carton of milk, courtesy of the Party, every day. On debate the
the back of the carton are printed the verses of the song "Oh, Party, words trig
My Beloved Mother." At the same time, thousands of children are most-sharc
being placed in "welfare centers because the state has put their pathetic,
parents in a camp: they are the re-education orphans. 3 In Hong

The first green shoots of a debate around risks and ethical people—l
implications have begun to appear. One chapter in a book pub- flare-ups
lished by Tencent's research institute, Artificial Intelligence: A USA—ar
National Strategic Initiative for AI, discusses the question and in mainl<
calls for "strict rules." The State Council's plan has promised to Chin;
introduce these rules in 2025, but as always in China, it is safe misusing
to assume that they won't stand in the way of the Party's need no such
for control. state's ft
Public debate on state surveillance is taboo. Xu Bings video menters
surveillance montage Dragonfly Eyes makes a strong statement— nies and
but the artist ducks further questions, instead speaking in philo- Tlie
sophical terms of a Buddhist-inspired dissolution of identities ("Am video ft
I really me? And isn't everyone connected to everyone else?") or of and coi
his ideas about a "post-surveillance society." Orwell's dystopian vi- from n1

THE EYE • E1I
tependence fro^
sion? "Uninteresting. Everyone is familiar with that, anyway," says
y claiming diat
Xu Bing—who, incidentally, went to a great deal of effort to track
ith the Xinjiang
down all the people who were recognizable in the images he used
•ciai space," said
and asked permission to use them.
Liffolk. This not
Industry executives like to argue that Chinese culture makes
ribed above; ac-
the country's citizens indifferent to data protection worries. "The
: Policy Institute
Chinese are more open and less sensitive about data protection,'
ie company also
claimed Baidu boss Robin Li at a forum in Beijing. "If people
tputing projects
are prepared to exchange their privacy for efficiency—and people
Security Bureau
here often are—then we can make even more use of the data."145
But is it really the case that the concept of privacy is alien to

£r the age of six
Chinese culture? Or is the disappearance of the term from public
r, every day. On
debate the result of Chinese politics? In any event, Robin Li s
ong "Oh, Party,
words triggered a surprisingly heated debate online. One of the
> of children are
most-shared comments called the Baidu boss "shameless and
;e has put their
pathetic," and many others simply wrote: "I am not prepared!'
ns.143
In Hong Kong and Taiwan—which are also home to Chinese
;ks and ethical
people—the topic of data protection and privacy regularly sparks
[n a- book pub-
flare-ups no less passionate than they are in Europe and the
Intelligence: A
USA—and recently, tentative discussions have been on the rise
e question and
in mainland China, too.
as promised to
China s new cybersecurity law forbids private companies from
îna, it is safe
misusing the data entrusted to them, though the same law places
^ Party's need
no such limitations on government authorities. Criticism of the
state's frenetic data-gathering remains taboo, and online com-

u Bings video
menters almost always restrict themselves to criticism of compa-
^g statement—
nies and their excesses.
îng in philo-
The cybersecurity firm Qihoo 360, for example, streamed the
dentities ("Am
video footage from surveillance cameras it had sold to individuals
ne else?") or of
and companies straight onto the internet, including live-streams
s dystopian vi-
from nurseries and school classrooms. The company said in its de-
21S • WE HAVE BEEN HARMONIZED
under the spoi

fense that it wanted to allow parents to check up on their children.
After a tremendous online outcry, Qihoo 360 took the website

in good hand;
No need
down (it was one of the sites from which Xu Bing had taken foot-
is all stored w
age for his film). And a survey conducted at the start of 2018 by
the state broadcaster CCTV and the National Statistics Office— skeptical exp
Do you havs
which questioned people between the ages of 16 and 60 in 100,000
whole life is
households, including those in smaller provincial towns—found
So, priv3
that more than 76 percent of those surveyed felt artificial intelli-
making a fu
gence was a threat to their privacy. And at the end of 2019, law
professor Guo Bing made headlines when he filed a lawsuit against

a safari park in Hangzhou for "violating consumer rights": the park
had started scanning all visitors with facial recognition cameras.
Nevertheless, the authorities do not look kindly on attempts to
draw attention to the issue. When an artist in Wuhan went online
and purchased the data of 346,000 citizens for the equivalent of a

few hundred dollars—name, sex, age, telephone number, address,
travel plans, online shopping—and then put them in an exhibi-
rion, calling it The Secrets of 346,000 Wuhaners, the police

closed the exhibition down and launched an investigation against
him for data theft. And when someone dares to write a few words
online about "mind control through artificial intelligence" as the
essayist YouShanDaBu did on WeChat, the censors will delete it

at once. Criticism of state surveillance remains prohibited. "The
investigation of the entire population has become a reality," the
essay said. "No one has a single corner left in which to hide. This
is a beautiful era. Our only option now is to all think the same
thought. Please give up all other thinking.'
No need to worry, insists the Party paper People's Daily: While

some feel threatened by a technology that puts almost everyone
THE EYE • 213
t Aeir children. under the spotlight, many more feel safer when such technology is
ok the website in good hands."147
ttad taken foot- No need to worry, Xie Yinan from Megvii told me: "The data
W of 2018 by is all stored with the police. It's quite safe there." When he saw my
:istics Office— skeptical expression, he added: "You want to talk about privacy?
60 in 100,000 Do you have a smartphone? Well, then youve lost already. Your
towns—found whole life is in there.'
rrificial intelli- So, privacy isn't under threat, it s dead and buried—no point
d of 2019, law making a fuss about it.
awsuit against
gW': the park

w cameras.
)n attempts to
n went online
quivalent of a
nber, address,
in an exhibi-
;/ the police
;ation against
' a few words
?ence" as the
will delete it
libited. "The
reality," the
:o hide. This
tik the same
^ "While
'st everyone

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LENDER: S9V :: Main Library

BORROWER: MDY :: Davis Family Library

BOOK TITLE: We have been harmonized : life in China's surveillance state /

BOOK AUTHOR: Kai Strittmatter

PUBLISHER: Harper Collins

PAGES: pp. 167-213

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HarperCollins books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales pro-

Originally published in Germany in 2018 by Piper Verlag GmbH. THE

English translation © 2019 by Ruth Martin

Designed by Lucy Albanese

ISBN 978-0-06-302729-9 THI

"The perfection of power should tend to render

TemtsuZZ"hu.ying by cast fleeting glances "AephU^

up to research surveillance algorithms, among other things, called

it: "Watching you watching Bentham." Jeremy Bentham was the

founder ofutilitarianism, as well as one of the leading exponents of

the British Enlightenment, an advocate of rationality and freedom,

and a pioneer of democracy and the liberal society. He was also up in

subjects take over the job of surveillmg themselves. in his

shows how generous it is by not crushing them: organized religion envis;

tham's panopticon was an architectural attempt to bring this form of pi

of surveillance to the world of the Enlightenment, to perfect and The

in a quantity hitherto without example."99 He could imagine his havi

panopticon being used as a school, a factory, or a hospital, but appJ

The panopticon is both simple and brilliant: a ring-shaped

there were no more bars, no more chains, no more heavy locks.'

; a ring-shaped All you have to do is isolate individuals effectively, and guarantee

himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he two moves in a

cameras and databases nationwide is called Xueliang. It is a play on strongest playei

has finally become a real possibility. China's security apparatus is To produce

thrilled. rificial neural i

Go is one of the world's oldest boardgames, invented more

mer, mathematician, geologist, pharmacologist, cartographer, hy-

branch of industry as well as many aspects of our private lives. It

will help reinvent everything that can be captured or supported

scientific research, transportation, or the city we live in. It is also

reinventing the authoritarian state.

Nowhere in the world was the fascination and the surprise at

AlphaGo's triumph as great as it was in China, the game's original

space: Sputnik 1. "Control of space means control of the world/

Lyndon B. Johnson warned in 1958, when he was the majority

the earth, for purposes of tyranny or for the service of freedom.'

Two AI advisors to the Chinese State Council described AlphaGo's

1957: with a sudden change of tack, and a financial and strategic

into artificial intelligence.

Zhang Bo, a well-known mathematician and AI expert from the

Chinese Academy of Sciences. I saw Zhang Bo speak at an AI

World Internet Conference at the end of 2017. Earlier that year, in

this same city, in the southern Chinese province of Zhejiang, the

DeepMind machine AlphaGo had given a repeat performance of

and that in the Facebook laboratories, at least, they were "havim

book's own AI research. Currently, they excelled at getting in-

formation from machines to people; the new challenge was how