Controlling China: an exploratory study into China's surveillance technology and its implications for Chinese citizens

Abstract

The aim of my work is to reach an understanding of the technological systems deployed by the Chinese government to control and monitor its population and the effect that those systems have on the Chinese citizens. Starting from the concept of surveillance, developed by the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham in its work “The Panopticon”, Foucault’s later interpretation of it, and the most modern adaptation of the concept to the specificities of the digital and technological society, the first part of the work will analyse the evolution of the surveillance concept and of surveillance technologies, taking into consideration also the case of western countries, such as the UK and the US. The second main topic will be the specific case of China and will provide an explanation of the evolution of surveillance practices from the monitoring systems deployed in the traditional China based on the Confucian philosophy to the newest technologies of control implemented in the most recent years. Furthermore, I will focus on the changes of surveillance and control systems after the foundation of the PRC in 1949, and the creation of the communist state, which brought huge political and societal changes. Then, taking the Tiananmen Square Massacre as a turning point, the focus will be on the new technologies implemented in China to control its population, also thanks to the cooperation with foreign firms. The last chapter will then focus on the latest project launched by the Chinese government in 2014, known under the name of “Social credit system”, which is an ambitious project whose aim is to create a huge database of data about every Chinese citizen, and give them a score based on their trustworthiness, that would affect their everyday life in different ways. I will then concentrate on the possible effect of this system, especially on those categories of people that may suffer the most from this project, such as political dissidents, human rights activist and so on.