Pei reveals the vast machinery of surveillance and repression in China, fueled by leaders’ fear, distrust, and paranoia.
An authoritative study of China’s surveillance system and its ability to strangle any possible dissent.
The era when observers thought that democratic reform in China might be possible is long gone. In fact, writes Pei, a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College and author of China’s Crony Capitalism and China’s Trapped Transition, surveillance and repression have become even more prevalent in the past two decades, and they continue to grow. The current trend is toward the use of sophisticated technology, including artificial intelligence, but the system is built on a bureaucratic, labor-intensive infrastructure dating from the Mao years. Much of China’s central government data is secret, but Pei managed to piece together the architecture from public documents, leaked reports, and interviews with exiles. A sizable portion of the surveillance occurs at the grassroots level, with battalions of informants reporting to local police. Above that level is a series of agencies that analyze the data and undertake detailed surveillance and coercion when needed, and high-level Communist Party committees provide oversight and coordination. The system adds up to what Pei calls “preventive repression,” aimed at identifying and dealing with dissent before it can become organized opposition. Most of China’s population seems willing to accept ongoing surveillance in return for social stability and economic growth. The system is extremely expensive, but Xi Jinping and his coterie are willing to pay it. Pei notes, however, that the size and effectiveness of the surveillance system might blind leaders to other threats, such as corruption and socioeconomic inequities. This book is as comprehensive an examination of the subject as possible, and the author presents his findings without hyperbole. He lets the facts speak for themselves, and they tell a scary story.
Pei reveals the vast machinery of surveillance and repression in China, fueled by leaders’ fear, distrust, and paranoia.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2024
ISBN: 9780674257832
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
IN THE NEWS
PERSPECTIVES
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
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