The Transparent Chinese

http://cn.nytimes.com/opinion/20131120/c20murong/en-us/

by kercker • 13 years ago

109 54 13 years ago

cn.nytimes.com

UnclePeepingSam• 13 years ago

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/13/after_mul...

so the title of this news should be "The Transparent American"? Lol

mtgx• 13 years ago

Too bad it's not the other way around: "The Transparent Chinese Government". Governments should be the ones that are completely transparent, not its citizens.

oceanstone2• 13 years ago

Surveillance has a chilling effect on free speech.

United857• 13 years ago

I lived in China for years, and this is not news. Chinese know from day 1 they are potentially being spied on -- the opposite of American thinking.

If the Chinese government had a leaker like Edward Snowden, any information from him would not surprise any Chinese person.

vorg3• 13 years ago

Anyone want to post the text of this article in the comments for those of us in China?

keevie• 13 years ago

BEIJING — About once a month, Hao Jian is politely asked by the police “to have a cup of tea.” He knows it wouldn’t be prudent to say, “No thank you.”

A government critic and professor at the Beijing Film Academy, Mr. Hao signed Charter 08, a 2008 manifesto modeled on Charter 77, the 1977 document that helped usher in the end of one-party rule in Czechoslovakia. He has participated in forums about democracy and the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, where his cousin died from a bullet wound. The police tap his phone, read his email and follow him. On special occasions, like for several months after Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, the government forbids him to leave China. “To me, your life is totally transparent,” a police officer told Mr. Hao during one of his recent chats.

Among my acquaintances and friends like Hao Jian, dozens are compelled to lead transparent lives. And in addition to government critics, the authorities watch organizers of church services held in private homes, Falun Gong practitioners and simple petitioners. No one knows how many people are under surveillance. We can’t even be sure which agency oversees that daunting task.

The Edward J. Snowden affair finally raised a chilling question for the whole world: How much privacy do citizens have to give up for the sake of public security? For us Chinese, this question is slightly different: How much privacy do we have to give up for the sake of the government’s security?

China is blanketed with surveillance cameras. They have been installed on most streets, in supermarkets and in classrooms. The official purpose of this growing network — known as Skynet — is often described as “law-and-order management.” But high-profile crimes — like the murder of an infant in a stolen car in Jilin Province earlier this year — suggest that the cameras have little to do with fighting crime: The costly camera network was criticized by the public for failing to find a suspect in that case.

By contrast, the surveillance system worked perfectly when targeting Li Tiantian, a Shanghai-based human rights lawyer. According to Ms. Li, security officials tried to show her boyfriend video footage of her walking into a hotel with other men, suggesting she was unfaithful. (He refused to watch it.)

The main purpose of the surveillance, of course, is control and intimidation. For almost a decade, “weiwen,” or “maintaining social stability,” has been the government’s public mantra, but this pursuit is simply a way to justify the Communist Party’s hold on power. “Stability” has been deemed more important than education, health care and even national defense. In the 2012 government budget, expenses for domestic security exceeded $111 billion, compared with a defense budget of $106 billion.

Wang Lijun, the former police chief of Chongqing who is in prison for seeking refuge in a U.S. Consulate in 2012, among other crimes, gave a glimpse of how the surveillance power is abused. He boasted in 2010 that his city’s surveillance system had identified 4,000 “unwelcome” people who had entered Chongqing around the time of Chinese New Year. Most of them were found and forced to leave the city within hours.

Yet most Chinese citizens seem unconcerned about living transparent lives. Even on social media, the most open opinion platform in China, few people question the legality and necessity of the extensive surveillance network. A survey conducted in 2012 among students in Central China Normal University showed that only about 55 percent of them were opposed to the installation of cameras in dormitories.

As an outspoken writer, I have become paranoid. I often suspect that I am being followed and videotaped, but I have no way of proving it. I occasionally turn around to see if the police are nearby. When I sit down at a café with friends, I often cannot help checking under the table for a listening device.

My internal battle to fight off the constant fear of not knowing what could happen to me at the hands of the government affects my judgment. I don’t know if this has affected my writing. Intuition tells me it hasn’t, but I have trouble trusting my intuition. It is the breakdown of trust — trust of oneself, trust of others — that is the worst consequence of living a transparent life.

At a party a few months ago, I witnessed one friend accusing another of being an agent for the Communist Party. It was not an isolated incident. I cannot avoid the thought that among my acquaintances someone is spying on me. I tell myself to be sincere with everyone, but my sincerity is frequently mixed with caution.

People under surveillance often cannot help look for ulterior motives behind ordinary social interactions. We are cautious when interacting with strangers. If a conversation with a stranger is inevitable, we tend to avoid speaking our minds. We fear whatever we say may be used against us. A friend recently told me that he has not made a single good friend in the past few years because it is difficult for him to trust people.

The Chinese government talks about building a “harmonious society.” But how can a society become truly harmonious if surveillance cameras are everywhere and everyone has to live with suspicion and fear? What kind of lives can we lead without trust?

Murong Xuecun, the pen name of Hao Qun, is the author of “Leave Me Alone: A Novel of Chengdu.” This article was adapted from a speech delivered in New York on Nov. 14 at a symposium on surveillance, co-sponsored by PEN America. It was translated by Jane Weizhen Pan and Martin Merz from the Chinese.

vorg3• 13 years ago

Thanks, hope the NYT don't mind. I can't be bothered with proxies and VPN's - whenever I find a free one that works, the party doesn't last long, so I don't bother much anymore.

ido• 13 years ago

Wow, they literally named it "skynet".

nl• 13 years ago

The article finishes with what I presume was supposed to be a rhetorical question:

Unfortunately - given recent revelations in the West - it isn't exactly clear that surveillance has anything at all to do with the kind of lives we lead.

vorg3• 13 years ago

One trick I've tried here in China is to talk to myself a lot, about things both true and absurd, using intonations both serious and comical, then sit back and wait to see who knows what I've been saying. The sociopaths running the system have many clueless intermediaries who have an emotional need to show off they're part of the loop.

One thing that pissed me off, though, is when foreigners got involved in the surveillance a while back. Many of those in business and the media in the West don't respect the freedoms many Chinese are trying to give their children.

ilaksh• 13 years ago

>The Edward J. Snowden affair finally raised a chilling question for the whole world: How much privacy do citizens have to give up for the sake of public security? For us Chinese, this question is slightly different: How much privacy do we have to give up for the sake of the government’s security?

The thing that most westerns still don't realize is that the reasons we are giving up privacy actually are the same. Our governments are just using the 'terrorism' myth as an excuse. Its amazing how the majority of people believe this type of propaganda and are completely unaware of the global and historical precedents of this type of strategy for suppression of dissent.

WoodenChair3• 13 years ago

If you don't believe the United States is actually using its intelligence for fighting terrorism then you're just as delusional as the people you refer to. Of course the government abuses and misuses its power on its own people - but the evidence is clear that the government is fighting terrorism. Many of the leaks, going all the way back to wikileaks, confirm this - not to mention the body bags.

capisce2• 13 years ago

They certainly put up a good show of it, but then they need to be able to justify the spending somehow. Historically though they've sponsored magnitudes of difference more terrorism around the world than they've prevented.

mogrim• 13 years ago

Certainly they're fighting terrorism, but the fact they're spying on EU allies suggests that commercial espionage may also play a part.

r0h1n• 13 years ago

Two places above this link on the HN front page right now is an Ars article about US senators admitting that there is "no evidence" bulk meta data surveillance is useful.

Edit: adding a link -https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6766669

speeder• 13 years ago

Yep, Angela Merkel, Dilma Rouseff, and Petrobras are terrorists.

Eye_of_Mordor• 13 years ago

"NSA Spying Did Not Result In a SINGLE Foiled Terrorist Plot"

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/10/nsa-spying-did-not-re...

PavlovsCat• 13 years ago

If a house is on fire, one bickers about wether that was malice or stupidity before putting it out, they're nuts. That as a foreword, a note to self and everybody.

not to mention the body bags.

Unless you have a specific set of bodybags in mind, I would actually say, the way civilians get attacked with drones (including a second strike to hit first responders, yay), and also going to war with Iraq for exactly zero good reasons, including niceties such as Abu Ghraib, would make it obvious that "the government" is fighting for terrorism, that is, the creation of more terrorists, while ignoring warnings from both experts in the field as well as random strangers who happen to be able to add 2 and 2.

Of course they wouldn't want to actually get overtaken by terrorism, but at the same time, NO terrorism would be nearly as useless. All of this is huuuge business, taken in total. All the gadgets and wars, all the dead people ("even Americans") and all the people being spied on ("even Americans"), may not do anything to prevent terrorism, but they represent a real cashflow, that's one big, fat fact. They also do provide a justification for total surveillance and the militarization of pretty much everything. That doesn't mean it's all made up and just a scam; terrorists are real, and they're not all "created by being mean to people", sometimes people are terrorists because they're dicks. But that doesn't mean that a.) other parties can't find ways to profit off all that, and b.) they can't find ways to fuel the fire, either on purpose or by being so stupid and full of it, that there isn't a meaningful difference between that actual malice, and the question becomes moot.

Why is terrorism objectionable? Because it destroys lives, and the lives of all those who live in fear. Not "because it's terrorism", but because of those and related things. So something done "in reaction" to that, and to "fight" it, especially when it is zero effective in actually fighting it, that does those same things, is a sibling of terrorism, not its counterpart. Which is unrelated to the question at hand but I wanted to point it out anyway. That you and I are not activists that "goes to sleep each night worried they might wake up with a gun in their mouth" (to paraphrase Appelbaum), or kids in Elsewhereistan whose grandmother was killed in a random drone attack and who can't enjoy a sunny day without fear ever since, or any day for that matter, makes it easy to underappreciate how real and fucked up this is. The terrorism it "fights" does not cause as much pain to the American people as the actions of the military-industrial complex causes others, and, as sick and sad as it is to say that, it's a thousand times cheaper.

You know how some people don't light fireworks on NYE because they realized that's just blowing money and dirt into the air for no reason? Now consider all those drones and carriers and rockets, consider the data centers, consider the TSA, and stop pissing the future of your children away. Even if you can't be arsed to feel empathy for others, consider the damage it does to you.

rayiner2• 13 years ago

Both you and the article miss a basic point, which is that the preservation of government, for its own sake, is in the interest of both the people who compose the government, and also of the people. This is particularly true in democratic countries, where the government is the vehicle for the popular will. The fall of a democratic government almost always leads to tyranny, because very few revolutionaries go to the trouble of overthrowing a government to not take advantage of the opportunity to impose their own point of view. In authoritarian regimes like China, there is less of an overlap between the interests of the people and the interests of the government. Though, there is still a tremendous overlap. The only thing worse than a bad government is no government.

lmg643• 13 years ago

There's a lot of truth in what you write - but ... there is a legitimate concern that even in a "democratic society" the "security" apparatus can be used to maintain the party in power.

think about watergate - it was a spying scandal, back when you had to physically collect the information. knowing what the opposition is thinking or doing is valuable information. discrediting critics and supporters of your opponent is political blocking and tackling 101. any government tools available for this purpose protect the incumbent.

bill clinton recently said one of the main scandals is that snowden was able to access top secret clearance so easily, and get access to so much sensitive information. "a world with no security, and no privacy." good line. hard to believe this won't bleed over to the election process.

giardini• 13 years ago

You would justify one true tyranny (ubiquitous surveillance) in order to prevent another, hypothetical, theoretical, unsubstantiated "tyranny" based on a few examples from the dustbin of history (and just so you don't mistake me, I intend that metaphor as "history is a useless dustbin with no predictive value")?

raymer sez: "The only thing worse than a bad government is no government."

Counterexample: North Korea. The various governments of the French Revolution. There are plenty more.

The nation-state is a relatively new concept in social history. National governments are neither necessary nor a proven good thing.

oceanstone2• 13 years ago

... democratic countries, where the government is the vehicle for the popular will

Ideally.

stcredzero2• 13 years ago

Both you and the article miss a basic point, which is that the preservation of government, for its own sake, is in the interest of both the people who compose the government, and also of the people. This is particularly true in democratic countries, where the government is the vehicle for the popular will.

The USSR made the exact same sort of claim.

In authoritarian regimes like China, there is less of an overlap between the interests of the people and the interests of the government.

There may be more of an overlap with the interests of the people as a whole, but less overlap with the interests of individuals. Polls are used extensively by party officials:

http://www.ted.com/talks/eric_x_li_a_tale_of_two_political_s...

stcredzero2• 13 years ago

The irony here, is that individuals and through them society are hurt tremendously by the loss of individual privacy, while institutions and society as a whole are benefitted by becoming more transparent. Yet, the balance of power is such that it is the individuals who are disclosing more and more information and the institutions who are controlling it.

Seems like there's room for another series of disruptions in the relationship between individuals and governments. I have a hunch that a society where rationality, privacy, and data security are truly prized would have economic advantages over the current ones.

bmurali• 13 years ago

Frankly I don't mind surveillance and spying when used for preventing terrorism or act of violence the same way as I don't mind when at international airports most of the time I find myself directed to the double security checks. But when its so apparent that the data is being used to target citizens in general and not fight crime it appalling! How do citizens stop a government from exploitation and damage?

ender7• 13 years ago

For almost a decade, “weiwen,” or “maintaining social stability,” has been the government’s public mantra[...]“Stability” has been deemed more important than education, health care and even national defense.

Political and social fixity (to use an obnoxious historian term) has been one of the overriding goals of the dominant Chinese polity since before the Great Wall was built. It's something that Westerners have a lot of trouble understanding -- Communism might be a fairly recent addition to China, but the value the Chinese place on stability is a tradition that dates so far back we have trouble measuring its age.

samspenc• 13 years ago

Possibly, but the Communist Party is perhaps the only one of its kind that uses tax money to protect its stability, not necessarily the stability of the nation. I think that's exactly what the author is trying to say with this statement:

For us Chinese, this question is slightly different: How much privacy do we have to give up for the sake of the government’s security?

prewett• 13 years ago

I think if you take a look at Chinese emperors you will find that they had a similar view on using tax money to protect their own stability.

For instance, the Qianlong emperor, one of the best recent emperors, banned over 2000 book and burned 150,000 copies of revolutionary literature. [1]

I'm guessing European kings also had a similar view of dissenters...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qianlong_Emperor#Burning_of_boo...

maize33• 13 years ago

One quibble: the article says that the ubiquitous surveillance cameras "have little to do with crime prevention" and cites a single case in which they weren't useful as proof. In fact they're constantly used to bust hit and runs, muggings, etc. I agree with Franklin's "those who would trade..." quote but its dishonest to pretend that this kind of surveillance doesn't help catch a lot of crime.

senriblyume• 13 years ago

Can't agree more. There are loads of examples show that surveillance cameras did play an important role in crime prevention and criminal convictions, but they are conveniently ignored in the article ... He made some valid points, but using surveillance cameras to support them? I don't buy it.

The Transparent Chinese

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