Beijing: When Chen picked up his phone to vent his anger over getting a parking ticket, his message was on WeChat It was a drop in the ocean of daily posts on China’s biggest social network.
But soon after his attack against the “simple-minded” traffic police in June, he found himself in the trap of the communist country’s omniscient surveillance apparatus.
Chen immediately deleted the post, but officers tracked him down and took him into custody within hours, accusing him of “insulting the police.”
He was jailed for five days for “inappropriate speech”.
His cases – one of thousands filed by a dissident and reported by local media – exposed the widespread surveillance that characterizes life in China today.
Its leaders have long taken an authoritarian approach to social control.
but since the president Xi Jinping Taking power in 2012, he reinvigorated the relatively free social currents of the turn of the century, using a combination of technology, law and ideology to suppress dissent and pre-emptive threats to his regime.
Clearly aimed at targeting criminals and protecting the system, social controls turned against dissidents, activists and religious minorities as well as ordinary people – such as Chen – have been crossed the line.
The average Chinese citizen today spends almost every waking moment under the watchful eye of the state.
Research firm Comparitech estimates that the average Chinese city has more than 370 security cameras per 1,000 people – making them the most surveyed places in the world, compared to 13 in London or 18 per 1,000 people in Singapore.
The nationwide “Skynet” urban surveillance project has accelerated with cameras capable of recognizing faces, clothes and age.
“We are being watched all the time,” an environmental activist told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The Communist Party’s hold is strongest in the far-western region of Xinjiang, where facial recognition and DNA collection have been deployed on predominantly Muslim minorities in the name of counter-terrorism.
The COVID-19 pandemic has turbo-charged China’s surveillance infrastructure, with citizens now tracking their smartphones through an app that determines where they can go based on a green, yellow or red code .
Regulations implemented since 2012 closed the loophole, which allowed people to buy SIM cards without giving their names, and made government identification mandatory for tickets on almost all forms of transportation.
There is no respite online, where shopping apps also require registration with a phone number linked to an identity document.
Wang, a Chinese dissident who spoke to AFP under a pseudonym due to security concerns, recalled a time before Xi when censors didn’t know everything and “on the Internet telling jokes about (former Chinese president) Jiang Zemin was very popular indeed”.
But the Chinese Internet – behind the “Great Firewall” since the early 2000s – has become an increasingly policed place.
Wang runs a Twitter account tracking thousands of cases of people being detained, fined or punished for speech acts since 2013.
Thanks to a real name verification system as well as collaboration between the police and social media platforms, people have been punished for a wide range of crimes online.
Platforms like Weibo employ thousands of content moderators and automatically block politically sensitive keywords, such as the tennis star Peng Shuai’s name after he accused a senior politician of sexual harassment last year.
Cybersecurity authorities are proposing new rules that would force platforms to monitor comments sections on posts – one of the ultimate ways for people to voice their complaints online.
Many of the surveillance techniques in use have been adopted in other countries.
“The real difference in China is the lack of independent media and civil society capable of meaningfully criticizing innovations or pointing out their many flaws,” Jeremy Daum of the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School told AFP.
Xi has reshaped Chinese society, with the Communist Party setting out what citizens should “know, feel, think, and say, and do”, Professor Emeritus of Contemporary China Studies at Oxford University Vivienne Shu told AFP.
Young people are kept away from foreign influences, authorities have banned international books and tuition companies forbid foreign teachers from hiring.
The ideological policing has extended to fashion as well, with television stations censoring tattoos and earrings on men.
“What bothers me the most is not the censorship itself, but how it has shaped people’s ideology,” said Twitter account owner Wang.
“With the elimination of dissent information, every website becomes a cult, where the government and leaders are worshipped.”
But soon after his attack against the “simple-minded” traffic police in June, he found himself in the trap of the communist country’s omniscient surveillance apparatus.
Chen immediately deleted the post, but officers tracked him down and took him into custody within hours, accusing him of “insulting the police.”
He was jailed for five days for “inappropriate speech”.
His cases – one of thousands filed by a dissident and reported by local media – exposed the widespread surveillance that characterizes life in China today.
Its leaders have long taken an authoritarian approach to social control.
but since the president Xi Jinping Taking power in 2012, he reinvigorated the relatively free social currents of the turn of the century, using a combination of technology, law and ideology to suppress dissent and pre-emptive threats to his regime.
Clearly aimed at targeting criminals and protecting the system, social controls turned against dissidents, activists and religious minorities as well as ordinary people – such as Chen – have been crossed the line.
The average Chinese citizen today spends almost every waking moment under the watchful eye of the state.
Research firm Comparitech estimates that the average Chinese city has more than 370 security cameras per 1,000 people – making them the most surveyed places in the world, compared to 13 in London or 18 per 1,000 people in Singapore.
The nationwide “Skynet” urban surveillance project has accelerated with cameras capable of recognizing faces, clothes and age.
“We are being watched all the time,” an environmental activist told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The Communist Party’s hold is strongest in the far-western region of Xinjiang, where facial recognition and DNA collection have been deployed on predominantly Muslim minorities in the name of counter-terrorism.
The COVID-19 pandemic has turbo-charged China’s surveillance infrastructure, with citizens now tracking their smartphones through an app that determines where they can go based on a green, yellow or red code .
Regulations implemented since 2012 closed the loophole, which allowed people to buy SIM cards without giving their names, and made government identification mandatory for tickets on almost all forms of transportation.
There is no respite online, where shopping apps also require registration with a phone number linked to an identity document.
Wang, a Chinese dissident who spoke to AFP under a pseudonym due to security concerns, recalled a time before Xi when censors didn’t know everything and “on the Internet telling jokes about (former Chinese president) Jiang Zemin was very popular indeed”.
But the Chinese Internet – behind the “Great Firewall” since the early 2000s – has become an increasingly policed place.
Wang runs a Twitter account tracking thousands of cases of people being detained, fined or punished for speech acts since 2013.
Thanks to a real name verification system as well as collaboration between the police and social media platforms, people have been punished for a wide range of crimes online.
Platforms like Weibo employ thousands of content moderators and automatically block politically sensitive keywords, such as the tennis star Peng Shuai’s name after he accused a senior politician of sexual harassment last year.
Cybersecurity authorities are proposing new rules that would force platforms to monitor comments sections on posts – one of the ultimate ways for people to voice their complaints online.
Many of the surveillance techniques in use have been adopted in other countries.
“The real difference in China is the lack of independent media and civil society capable of meaningfully criticizing innovations or pointing out their many flaws,” Jeremy Daum of the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School told AFP.
Xi has reshaped Chinese society, with the Communist Party setting out what citizens should “know, feel, think, and say, and do”, Professor Emeritus of Contemporary China Studies at Oxford University Vivienne Shu told AFP.
Young people are kept away from foreign influences, authorities have banned international books and tuition companies forbid foreign teachers from hiring.
The ideological policing has extended to fashion as well, with television stations censoring tattoos and earrings on men.
“What bothers me the most is not the censorship itself, but how it has shaped people’s ideology,” said Twitter account owner Wang.
“With the elimination of dissent information, every website becomes a cult, where the government and leaders are worshipped.”