Minxin Pei: The Chinese government can still do quite a lot to revive the economy, but that does not mean that it will.
For example, China’s government could give ordinary people vouchers redeemable for daily necessities, thereby stimulating household consumption and offsetting, at least partly, the effects of an imploding real-estate bubble. Similarly, reining in its “anti-espionage” campaign – including by releasing the private entrepreneurs that have been wrongfully imprisoned – could help to lure back foreign investors that are now afraid to engage with China.
These measures, both substantive and symbolic, would go a long way toward bolstering China’s growth prospects. But China’s government is unwilling to pursue them. It prefers, instead, to offer empty talk alongside small, incremental monetary stimulus. That is why the economy is still struggling – and will continue to do so.
PS: By hyping growth, China’s leaders hoped to reassure private investors and mollify “popular frustration” with “draconian zero-COVID restrictions” followed by “the botched exit from the policy.” How does the Chinese public view their leaders’ performance on the economy, and does President Xi Jinping’s handling of geopolitical issues – including his “saber-rattling” over Taiwan – strengthen or undermine public satisfaction?
MP: Because the Chinese government does not allow independent public-opinion polling – it does not publish any opinion polls at all, independent or otherwise – it is very difficult to know what ordinary Chinese people think of Xi or his performance.
On domestic policy issues, such as Xi’s handling of the economy, we can infer the public’s likely impression based on official economic statistics. And based on factors like deflation, high youth unemployment, and falling housing prices, it is safe to assume that Xi’s image as a capable steward of the economy has been dented.
On geopolitics, however, it is harder to make even educated guesses. The Chinese government tightly controls the flow of information about the outside world, and most Chinese do not have as good a sense about geopolitics as they do about the domestic economy.
PS: The rapid economic growth of the past four decades has undoubtedly bolstered the Communist Party of China’s position. But in your new book, The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China, you argue that the “key to the survival of the world’s most powerful one-party dictatorship” has been its vast security apparatus, which relies on “low-tech, labor-intensive approaches.” What are some examples of how these approaches are deployed against ordinary citizens?
MP: One example is the classification of ordinary people as “key individuals.” People on this list are subject to surveillance by the police, local authorities, and informants. Around sensitive dates, such as the annual plenary sessions of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, local authorities check on these individuals regularly. The police also recruit ordinary people, such as sanitation workers and shop owners, to keep an eye on important public venues, from train stations to public squares. On university campuses, students are recruited as informants, who then report on their classmates and professors.
BY THE WAY . . .
PS: In your book, you distinguish between “preventive repression” – the bread and butter of the Chinese surveillance state – and “reactive techniques,” like state violence. How does preventive repression work, and how does the social-credit system advance it?
MP: Preventive repression is both harder to detect and more effective than reactive repression. Through surveillance, the security apparatus gains insights into the plans and intentions of those it considers potential threats, enabling it to intervene quietly, before any organized action takes place. And the knowledge that one’s activities are being watched can of course be enough to deter acts of resistance.
In my book, I call the social-credit system the “latest major innovation in China’s ecosystem of preventive repression.” The idea is to use huge amounts of data to determine a “credit score” for every Chinese citizen, based on evidence of what the state considers prosocial and antisocial behavior.
Though the system is not yet mature enough for the Chinese government to integrate it fully into the apparatus of preventive repression, in the future big data and artificial intelligence could be used to assess an individual’s political leanings and to map their social networks comprehensively (surveillance of social media already allows the Chinese government to do this to some extent.) This would enable the government to profile threats more accurately and monitor them more closely.
PS: You mention AI. How could embracing it change China’s approach to surveillance? Should we expect a wave of layoffs by the security agencies?
MP: Unfortunately, the official sources I have seen were published before recent AI breakthroughs enabled the technology’s broad application, so I have not come across many references to the use of AI. But I think AI has the potential to make the surveillance system more efficient by processing huge amounts of data more quickly and accurately. Its impact on the size of security agencies is likely to be small, because formal security agencies in China do not employ a large number of officers doing the kind of work AI can do. Instead, most of them engage in tasks that AI is unlikely to take on any time soon, like recruiting and handling informants or conducting raids and intimidating targets.
PS: You write that “much of the information needed in order to understand the large-scale organization and operations of [China’s] surveillance state is not publicly available.” How did you overcome this challenge?
MP: China is a huge country. There are nearly 3,000 county-level jurisdictions and about 300 city-level administrative units. Keeping secrets in such a vast system is not easy. Most government agencies and local authorities publish annual reports, called yearbooks. Police used to publish “gazettes,” or accounts of their past work. While these publications are vetted to prevent leaks of sensitive or classified information, the vetting process is imperfect, and enough information slips through the cracks to allow researchers like me to piece together the puzzle.
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