Guarding Dictatorship: How China organizes and operates its surveillance state

China’s hi-tech surveillance capabilities, such as the use of facial recognition, big data, and mobile phone tracking, have received enormous attention in the media. However, China’s labour-intensive and organization-intensive approach to state surveillance is probably far more effective than its reliance on technology. In this seminar, Professor Minxin Pei will present findings on how China operates a labour-intensive surveillance apparatus that heavily relies on a party bureaucracy to coordinate surveillance, a vast network of informants to spy on the population, and mass surveillance programs that target perhaps 1 percent of the population. His research shows that a Leninist regime possesses organizational capabilities uniquely suited for implementing labour-intensive state surveillance. 

About the speaker

Minxin Pei is the Tom and Margot Pritzker ‘72 Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College.  He is also a non-resident senior fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.  In 2019 he was the inaugural Library of Congress Chair on U.S.-China Relations.  Prior to joining Claremont McKenna College in 2009, he was a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from 1999 to 2009 and served as its director of the China Program from 2003 to 2008.  He was an assistant professor of politics at Princeton University from 1992 to 1998.  He received his Ph.D. in government from Harvard University in 1991. He is the author of From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union (Harvard University Press, 1994), China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy (Harvard University Press, 2006), China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay (Harvard University Press, 2016), and Guarding Dictatorship: China’s Surveillance State (forthcoming, Harvard University Press).   

Registration

This event is open to the public and free to attend, however registration is required. Complete this form to register.

Please note that this talk is taking place on campus and will not be recorded or live-streamed.

Chair: Professor Steve Tsang (Director, SOAS China Institute)

Organiser: SOAS China Institute

Contact email: sci@soas.ac.uk

Image credit: Photo by Weiye Tan on Unsplash