Böcker av Kai Strittmatter

A remarkable book. The more one reads, the more pressing one conclusion becomes: almost everything we thought we knew about contemporary China is wrong.The Observer,Book of the WeekHailed as a masterwork of reporting and analysis, and based on decades of research within China, We Have Been Harmonized, by award-winning correspondent Kai Strittmatter, offers a groundbreaking look at how the inter-net and high tech have allowed China to create the largest and most effective surveillance state in history.Chinas new drive for repression is being underpinned by unpre-cedented advances in technology: facial and voice recognition, GPS tracking, supercomputer databases, intercepted cell phone conver-sations, the monitoring of app use, and millions of high-resolution security cameras make it nearly impossible for a Chinese citizen to hide anything from authorities. Commercial transactions, including food deliveries and online purchases, are fed into vast databases, along with everything from biometric information to social media activities to methods of birth control. Cameras (so advanced that they can locate a single person within a stadium crowd of 60,000) scan for faces and walking patterns to track each individuals move-ment. In some schools, childrens facial expressions are monitored to make sure they are paying attention at the right times. In a new Social Credit System, each citizen is given a score for good behavior; for those who rate poorly, punishments include being banned from flying or taking high-speed trains, exclusion from certain jobs, and preventing their children from attending better schools. And it gets worse: advanced surveillance has led to the imprisonment of more than a million Chinese citizens in western China alone, many held in draconian reeducation camps.This digital totalitarianism has been made possible not only with the help of Chinese private tech companies, but the complic-ity of Western governments and corporations eager to gain access to Chinas huge market. And while governments debate trade wars and tariffs, the Chinese Communist Party and its local partners are aggressively stepping up their efforts to export their surveillance technology abroadincluding to the United States. We Have Been Harmonized is a terrifying portrait of life under unprecedented government surveillanceand a dire warning about what could happen anywhere under the pretense of national security.Terrifying. A warning call."e; TheSunday Times(UK), a Best Book of the Year so Far

Did you know Chinese don't eat soup, they drink it? That their surnames come before their first names? That their good sense is to be found not in their heads but in their hearts? Or that white is their colour of mourning? This title provides a guide to China's sociable and friendly people and their complex and often contradictory society.