6 ms·

The Transparent Chinese

109 points by kercker 13y ago

UnclePeepingSam 13y ago
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/13/after_multiple_denials_cia_admits_to_snooping_on_noam_chomsky http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/13/after_mul... so the title of this news should be "The Transparent American"? Lol
mtgx 13y 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.
ChrisAntaki 13y ago
Surveillance has a chilling effect on free speech.
United857 13y 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.
vorg 13y ago
Anyone want to post the text of this article in the comments for those of us in China?
- keevie 13y 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.
  - vorg 13y 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.
    - zmh 13y ago
      It's so ironic that Edward Snowden fleed to Hong Kong under China first.
      - r0muald 13y ago
        And then moved to Russia.
      - WoodenChair 13y ago
        He was afraid to go to (A) any country with an extradition treaty with the United States (B) any US ally. It just goes to show that most of the countries of the world actually do like the United States I guess/or could've in his opinion been coerced to extradite him.
        k-mcgrady 13y ago
        >> "It just goes to show that most of the countries of the world actually do like the United States" I doubt countries support the US in things like Snowden because they 'like' them. They do it because the US is powerful and the repercussions of not extraditing Snowden aren't worth it to them.
        stygianguest 13y ago
        It may seem hard to believe, but countries like Germany did operate by the assumption that the Americans at least have good intentions. Everybody knows that the US can and will push their agenda when they think it is important, but often nobody sees real harm in cooperating either. That is also why the spying on Merkel is extremely harmful to American-German relations. It changes the view of the public at large on the US.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
ido 13y ago
Wow, they literally named it "skynet".
nl 13y ago
The article finishes with what I presume was supposed to be a rhetorical question: 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? 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.
vorg 13y 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 13y 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.
- WoodenChair 13y 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.
  - r0h1n 13y 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6766669
    - comex 13y ago
      There's an enormous difference between something perhaps not truly being useful for its intended purpose and the purpose being a conspiracy sham.
      - pessimizer 13y ago
        Between people who fight for expensive and inconvenient procedures in the name of a particular existential threat, but when pressed admit that the methods are not at all effective for that purpose - an enormous difference between those people and people who have a different motive than they claim to have? A minuscule difference. If you support A to do B, but admit that A doesn't do B, then I assume that you support A to do X. If doing A causes you to make money, I'm gonna assume X is to make money.
bmurali 13y 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?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
ender7 13y 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 13y 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 13y 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_books_and_modification_of_texts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qianlong_Emperor#Burning_of_boo...
maize33 13y 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 13y 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.

109 points by kercker 13y ago

http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/13/after_multiple_denials_cia_admits_to_snooping_on_noam_chomsky http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/08/13/after_mul... so the title of this news should be "The Transparent American"? Lol

mtgx 13y 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.

ChrisAntaki 13y ago

Surveillance has a chilling effect on free speech.

United857 13y 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.

vorg 13y ago

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

keevie 13y 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.
- vorg 13y 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.
  - zmh 13y ago
    It's so ironic that Edward Snowden fleed to Hong Kong under China first.
    - r0muald 13y ago
      And then moved to Russia.
    - WoodenChair 13y ago
      He was afraid to go to (A) any country with an extradition treaty with the United States (B) any US ally. It just goes to show that most of the countries of the world actually do like the United States I guess/or could've in his opinion been coerced to extradite him.
      - k-mcgrady 13y ago
        >> "It just goes to show that most of the countries of the world actually do like the United States" I doubt countries support the US in things like Snowden because they 'like' them. They do it because the US is powerful and the repercussions of not extraditing Snowden aren't worth it to them.
        stygianguest 13y ago
        It may seem hard to believe, but countries like Germany did operate by the assumption that the Americans at least have good intentions. Everybody knows that the US can and will push their agenda when they think it is important, but often nobody sees real harm in cooperating either. That is also why the spying on Merkel is extremely harmful to American-German relations. It changes the view of the public at large on the US.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

ido 13y ago

Wow, they literally named it "skynet".

nl 13y ago

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

vorg 13y 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 13y 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.

WoodenChair 13y 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.
- r0h1n 13y 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6766669
  - comex 13y ago
    There's an enormous difference between something perhaps not truly being useful for its intended purpose and the purpose being a conspiracy sham.
    - pessimizer 13y ago
      Between people who fight for expensive and inconvenient procedures in the name of a particular existential threat, but when pressed admit that the methods are not at all effective for that purpose - an enormous difference between those people and people who have a different motive than they claim to have? A minuscule difference. If you support A to do B, but admit that A doesn't do B, then I assume that you support A to do X. If doing A causes you to make money, I'm gonna assume X is to make money.

bmurali 13y 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?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

ender7 13y 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 13y 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 13y 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_books_and_modification_of_texts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qianlong_Emperor#Burning_of_boo...

maize33 13y 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 13y 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.