The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey into China's Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future

by Geoffrey Cain

Overview

A riveting investigation into how a restive region of China became the site of a nightmare Orwellian social experiment—the definitive police state—and the global technology giants that made it possible
 
Blocked from facts and truth, under constant surveillance, surrounded by a hostile alien police force: Xinjiang’s Uyghur population has become cursed, oppressed, outcast. Most citizens cannot discern between enemy and friend. Social trust has been destroyed systematically. Friends betray each other, bosses snitch on employees, teachers expose their students, and children turn on their parents. Everyone is dependent on a government that nonetheless treats them with suspicion and contempt. Welcome to the Perfect Police State.
 
Using the haunting story of one young woman’s attempt to escape the vicious technological dystopia, his own reporting from Xinjiang, and extensive firsthand testimony from exiles, Geoffrey Cain reveals the extraordinary intrusiveness and power of the tech surveillance giants and the chilling implications for all our futures.
 
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541757035
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	06/29/2021
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	1,050,729
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 5.80(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Geoffrey Cain is an investigative journalist and technology writer who reported from Asia and the Middle East for twelve years. He’s contributed to the Economist, Time, the Wall Street Journal, and dozens of other magazines and newspapers. His first book, Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech, was longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year award. A Fulbright scholar, he studied at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies and the George Washington University, and is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He lives in Istanbul, Turkey.

Table of Contents

Note on Research and on Uyghur and Han Chinese Names ix

Prologue: The Situation 1

1 The New Dominion 6

2 The Panopticon 16

3 Sky Net Has Found You 25

4 China Rises 36

5 Deep Neural Network 50

6 Do You Think I Am an Automaton? 62

7 The Great Rejuvenation 71

8 China's War on Terror 83

9 The Three Evils: Terrorism, Extremism, and Separatism 93

10 People as Data 106

11 How to Rank Everyone on Their Trustworthiness 112

12 The All-Seeing Eye 123

13 Called to a Concentration Camp 133

14 Mass Internment 148

15 The Big Brain 162

16 The Bureaucracy Is Expanding to Meet the Needs of the Expanding Bureaucracy 170

17 The Prison of the Mind 180

18 A New Cold Wax? 189

19 The Great Rupture 201

20 You're Not Safe Anywhere 213

Coda: Stop the Panopticon 218

Acknowledgments 231

Notes 237

Index 277

Editorial Reviews

04/26/2021

The Chinese government has innovated a new form of authoritarianism based on advanced surveillance technologies argues journalist Cain (Samsung Rising) in this disturbing and deeply reported account. He accuses the Chinese government of creating “the world’s most sophisticated surveillance dystopia” in the Xinjiang province, where an estimated 1.8 million Uighurs, Kazakhs, and members of other Muslim ethnic minorities “have been accused by the government of harboring ‘ideological viruses’ and ‘terrorist thoughts,’ and taken away to hundreds of concentration camps.” Cain speaks to camp survivors and interviews technology workers to detail how the government uses artificial intelligence, facial recognition cameras, police checkpoints, and DNA collection to surveil nearly every aspect of life in Xinjiang. He also reports on how China uses massive bailouts and high-interest loans to bring poorer countries under its web of influence, and details the use of Chinese surveillance technologies by authoritarian leaders in Uzbekistan and Uganda. The recent trade war between the U.S. and China has sparked investigations into the role that Chinese tech firms including Huawei have played in repressing the country’s ethnic minorities, but a “zero-sum” conflict between the two countries threatens to derail America’s “large technological lead.” Packing a wealth of information into a crisp narrative, this is an impassioned and well-informed exposé. (June)

Publishers Weekly

The future has arrived and it is beyond anything George Orwell could have imagined. In this important new book, Cain details exactly how the Chinese Communist Party deployed 21st century technology—facial recognition, DNA tracking, artificial intelligence—to trap millions of its own citizens in a terrifying dystopia.”
—Barbara Demick, author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

The Perfect Police State should come with a warning:  the scope of the Chinese surveillance state is deeper, broader, more insidious and terrifying than you can imagine. Geoffrey Cain deftly details how China has used global businesses, unabashed censorship at home and alliances with authoritarian regimes to create an ever-expanding police state. Cain doesn’t lose sight of the people entrapped by the system… The Perfect Police State is a tour-de-force.—Elizabeth Becker, author of When the War Was Over

In an expose that is as timely as it is alarming, Geoffrey Cain shows how China is using artificial intelligence and totalitarian repression to turn its westernmost region into a human-rights hellhole. After reading The Perfect Police State, it is impossible to regard the Chinese leadership with anything other than contempt—and fear.
—Blaine Harden, author of Escape from Camp 14

“Packing a wealth of information into a crisp narrative, this is an impassioned and well-informed exposé.”—Publishers Weekly

“A scarifying dive into China’s pernicious spy state…A prescient, alarming work on the overreach of technology and state power.”—Kirkus Reviews

“[T]he real value of Cain’s book is its tying together of the different threads of reportage on ‘the Situation’ in Xinjiang — as it is euphemistically called on the ground. He is especially good at explaining how this vast, sparsely populated desert region became a laboratory for China’s emerging techno-authoritarianism.”—The Spectator

“Geoffrey Cain’s account of the techno-dystopia taking shape in mainland China blends historical background, business reporting, investigative journalism and political commentary… Cain also fits the story into a broader context: the collusion of capitalism and communism….Western executives doing business with China should read this book and look hard in the mirror.”—Times UK

“Cain complements [a personal] account with an efficient analysis of the technological advances required to create China’s modern panopticon, including major developments in facial and voice recognition and an AI system able to perform ‘predictive policing’… He offers a cogent portrait of the economic imperatives driving the development of these technologies, and of the general corporate reluctance to take much interest in their application.”—Times Literary Supplement

“Journalist Geoffrey Cain gives us a riveting account of the realities on the ground in China’s huge western province, based on his own reporting and accounts from exiles, with a single story of escape at the heart of it. His prose leaps off the page, and brings to life the human cost when Big Brother is always watching.”—The Wire China

“Even for those who have no intention of ever visiting China or Xinjiang, this book is recommended.”—Asia Times

From the Publisher

★ 2021-04-28
A scarifying dive into China’s pernicious spy state.

Enlisting interviews with Uyghur refugees in Turkey, where he now lives, American investigative journalist Cain digs into the “sophisticated surveillance dystopia” set up by the Chinese government. Unprecedented advances in artificial intelligence, facial recognition, and other technologies have allowed the state to monitor and control the Uyghur population in Xinjiang. This is just the beginning, warns the author, whose previous book, Samsung Rising (2020), exposed many of the secrets of the South Korean tech giant. In his latest investigation, Cain was determined to infiltrate China’s crackdown in Xinjiang, where the state accuses the native Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim people, of the “three evils” of terrorism, separatism, and extremism. With China’s aim to revive the historic Silk Road via its ambitious, $1 trillion One Belt, One Road initiative, it needed to pacify the restive region of Xinjiang, its most sensitive border. However, beginning in 2014, China escalated its counterterrorism tactics to unseen levels of brutality. As Cain writes, “China’s goal was to erase one people’s identity, culture, and history and to achieve a total assimilation of millions of people.” The author systematically breaks down these methods, including the creation of “vocational training centers” and “reeducation centers,” which, by 2017, housed more than 1.5 million Uyghurs. Cain’s main protagonist, “Maysem,” chronicles the increased monitoring of her family and home and tells about how she was placed in a concentration camp because of her supposed propensity for crime. This was based on “predictive policing,” in which AI uses an algorithm “to guess who might commit a crime in the future.” In addition to hundreds of hours of personal interviews with 168 Uyghurs, the author also examines documentation suggesting “deep connivance of many Chinese technology firms in creating the monstrosity in Xinjiang.” And the monster continues to expand, with Chinese tentacles reaching outside its borders to bring refugees back into the fold. Cain also tracks how similar technology is being deployed in the U.S.

A prescient, alarming work on the overreach of technology and state power.

Kirkus Reviews