Surveillance State by 2020 National Fellow Josh Chin and Liza Lin tells the gripping, startling, and detailed story of how China’s Communist Party is building a new kind of political control: shaping the will of the people through the sophisticated—and often brutal—harnessing of data.
It is a story born in Silicon Valley and America’s “War on Terror,” and now playing out in alarming ways on China’s remote Central Asian frontier. As a minority separatist movement strains against Party control, China’s leaders have built a dystopian police state that keeps millions under the constant gaze of security forces armed with AI. But across the country in the city of Hangzhou, the government is weaving a digital utopia, where technology helps optimize everything from traffic patterns to food safety to emergency response.
Award-winning journalists Josh Chin and Liza Lin take readers on a journey through the new world China is building within its borders, and beyond. Telling harrowing stories of the people and families affected by the Party’s ambitions, Surveillance State reveals a future that is already underway—a new society engineered around the power of digital surveillance.
Join the New America Fellows Program for a conversation with Josh Chin, Liza Lin, and 2016 Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow Mei Fong about Surveillance State.
Follow the conversation online using #SurveillanceState and follow us at @NAFellows.
Speakers:
Josh Chin, @joshchin
2020 National Fellow, New America
Author, Surveillance State: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control
Liza Lin, @lizalinwsj
Author, Surveillance State: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control
Mei Fong, @meifongwriter
2016 Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow, New America
Author, One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment
Copies of Surveillance State are available for purchase here through our bookselling partner Solid State Books.
