
From laboratory in far west, China’s surveillance state spreads quietly - adventured
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-monitoring-insight/from-laboratory-in-far-west-chinas-surveillance-state-spreads-quietly-idUSKBN1KZ0R3
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assblaster
I have first hand experience in Xinjiang a decade ago. Based on this report,
it's gotten even worse. What I remember most was:

1) nearly hourly MMS messages to my flip phone from unknown numbers with an
unknown attachment. Since my phone was bought outside China, the MMS
attachment didn't automatically open the likely spyware.

2) Being followed and monitored by plainclothes policemen

3) Having my hotel room searched while I was away. Having police come to my
hotel room to interrogate me but lacking access because I had the only key to
the room (very very cheap hotel).

4) Armed convoys of Chinese army soldiers constantly going up and down major
streets.

The originally intention ten years ago was massive surveillance and
intelligence gathering. AI and facial recognition are just making this easier
and far less costly for their government.

It's clear now that China is moving towards dictatorship, not democracy.

~~~
mherrmann
"Moving towards dictatorship" is an understatement imho. They're already
there.

~~~
3pt14159
Eh. I dunno. There should be a word for it that isn't dictatorship. There is
an order-ness and a certain degree of pragmatism and restraint that the
Chinese state has that most dictatorships do not. They sort of bend with the
wind at times and it vents the outrage. They allow the intelligent to get
access to the real internet without letting the bulk of their population talk
unhindered. The way they do the Communist party is really smart too. They take
the top high school students and successful academics / business people. So it
naturally turns into the area that smart people solve problems, instead of
turning them against the state.

I agree that AI-powered surveillance is worrying, but it's not going to look
like Stalin. It's going to look like something completely different.

~~~
adventured
> I agree that AI-powered surveillance is worrying, but it's not going to look
> like Stalin. It's going to look like something completely different.

China is in the hands of Xi now. So that entirely depends on what he's willing
to do to try to retain power, and what he regards as necessary to pursue his
vision. Dictators get increasingly paranoid and erratic with time, with few
exceptions in the last several hundred years. Erdogan is the latest example of
a dictator losing his mind and running a country into the ground to preserve
his power and pursue his vision. That's in part because the people get tired
of a leader over time, even in the best of circumstances. The only choice to
maintain the position Xi has is to crack down more and more on the population,
restrict them further and further. Eventually every squeak is perceived as a
threat.

The real question is whether Xi leads them back to more Mao-like hyper
authoritarian policies, to ensure his dictatorship and his vision for China.
I'm skeptical it can end any other way, the path seems to have already been
decided. The people that say China is different, are ignoring that this is no
longer Deng's China, there has been a fundamental recent change in where
they're going. China had to either continue liberalizing, or had to turn back,
you can only float inbetween for so long. They chose (both Xi and the party
that has handed him the reins).

~~~
lazerpants
It's difficult to tell, given that China is a dictatorship, but there are some
in the party and state that are perhaps opposed to Xi seizing so much power.

Good article on this: [https://www.economist.com/china/2018/08/11/how-to-read-
summe...](https://www.economist.com/china/2018/08/11/how-to-read-summer-
grumbles-about-chinas-swaggering-leader)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
China is more of an authoritarian aristocracy at this point ruled by a few
really powerful red families. Xi’s is only one such family, the others have
power and will often duke it out in various factions.

I still don’t think Xi is as powerful as even Jiang Zemin was, he definitely
isn’t at Deng’s level yet.

~~~
woodandsteel
If Xi is not very powerful, then how was he able to do away with the two-term
limit?

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onetimemanytime
This tech will be sold to every country in the world, completed with language
files. Plug and play. That's the even sadder part.

~~~
padthai
I have a friend that worked developing Internet in Equatorial Guinea around
2014. He told me that in a couple of occasions, Chinese teams came there to
install surveillance systems.

So this is already happening.

~~~
onetimemanytime
Countries that started from zero have an advantage over western countries: no
legacy systems to interact with. Just brand new apps

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al_ramich
Curious if the phone scanning devices require the user to provide their pin or
if they have the ability to bypass phone access security (I suspect not).

------
api
I'm really tired of people fawning over China. This is a country with a
horrible human rights record, over a million people presently in camps based
on _racial profiling_ , and an active program to build the most comprehensive
surveillance state in the world.

It's doubly hypocritical when the people doing the fawning are American
liberals that would go completely bonkers if anything like that were happening
here. (The same logic applies to Saudi Arabia, our other even more brutal
"ally.") Money talks I guess. China's GDP growth has been phenomenal and
that's all that matters.

Getting tough on trade with China is one of the very few things I agree with
Trump about. The Chinese don't play fair in the trade realm either. They
vertically integrate their industries with the government, subsidize them to
dump, manipulate their currency, ignore the environment and pollute to a
degree unprecedented in human history, and deploy "soft" plausibly-deniable
mechanisms for trade protectionism so they can pretend to open their markets
without actually doing so. The most significant part of the latter is the
"great firewall," which is as much about keeping foreign Internet companies
out of China as it is about censorship or surveillance. Another mechanism is a
maze of regulations around currency, banking, incorporation, and payment
systems that makes actually taking payments from Chinese customers painful.
It's very easy to send money into China but hard to take any money out.

~~~
tepidandroid
> I'm really tired of people fawning over China.

Where are you seeing this? Any thread even remotely involving China is 95%
filled with anti-Chinese posts, such as your own. There were a few this week.
Heck, look in this very same comment thread -where are the 'fawners' you speak
of?

~~~
dnomad
It's strange, isn't it?

It's a ritual at this point: an anti-China post is submitted by adventured,
rapidly voted up, and then filled with comments that are a competition to see
who can denounce China the most.

What do you suppose the point is?

Is it a Trump thing?

It certainly wasn't always the case. There was a time when I happily shared HN
with Chinese colleagues. Was that point, I wonder.

~~~
tepidandroid
The only demographic I can think of that would dedicate so much time
denigrating a country with such force and vitriol are the ex-pats. SV types,
though very left leaning, are far too busy.

A common pattern to look for is large blocks of hand-wavy, conjecture-fuelled
text with little in the way of facts and substance.

~~~
yorwba
Do you mean ex-pats from China living in other countries, or ex-pats from
other countries now living in China?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I think they means the latter. We (well, I used to be one) have a reputation
for being salty, though we are just very critical having lived the life and
seen things for real.

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geogra4
They're just copying what the CIA/NSA has been doing for decades.

~~~
christophilus
There's not an equivalency, though. In the US, at least in theory, we have a
system that is founded on the idea that a human being has inalienable rights
that come from their creator, and therefore are not arbitrary concessions of
the state. China has no such concept.

China views a human being as merely material, and human rights as essentially
arbitrary. This is not just a theoretical difference. It's as practical as it
gets.

If the US does keep going down the road towards tyranny, it is in spite of
it's foundation, not because of it, and its actions will be inconsistent with
its own guiding principle. This foundational guiding principle of the US gives
me some hope that we are _not_ on in the middle of an inevitable collapse into
tyranny.

~~~
kosma
> the US, at least in theory, we have a system that is founded on the idea
> that a human being has inalienable rights

As long as you're a US citizen.

~~~
graeme
You might be thinking of the border. Within the US, the constitution applies
generally to foreigners, IIRC

~~~
christophilus
Yep. This is right, and many of our actions at the border are in direct
violation of human rights as recognized by the "unalienable rights" clause.

