The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China

In this meticulous study, Pei (China’s Crony Capitalism), a professor of political science at Claremont Mckenna College, recaps the rise of China’s surveillance apparatus, now infamous for its scary ensemble of technologies like ubiquitous surveillance cameras, facial-recognition software, and Wi-Fi sniffers that can track people in real time. However, the key to China’s surveillance prowess, Pei asserts, isn’t the futuristic gear but the human element, namely the Leninist party-state that extends its tentacles into businesses, universities, and neighborhood associations; recruits millions of secret informants; and deploys “door-knocking” missions to intimidate malcontents. The result, Pei notes, is a soft totalitarianism that subtly deters and dissuades political opposition before it gets going, as when dissident Wang Tiancheng was kept at home on the anniversary of the Tianmen Square massacre by secret policemen who showed up and offered to run all his errands so he would not have to leave his apartment. Writing in lucid if somewhat dry prose, Pei ably untangles and demystifies the Chinese surveillance system: for all its obscure and sinister aura, he paints it as the work of harried bureaucrats who struggle with glitchy equipment and unproductive employees. (Sixty percent of informants, Pei reckons, produce no intelligence at all.) It adds up to a clear-eyed account of China’s surveillance crusade. (Feb.)