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The Xi Jinping Effect: 6. Xi Jinping’s Surveillance State: Merging Digital Technology and Grassroots Organizations

The Xi Jinping Effect
6. Xi Jinping’s Surveillance State: Merging Digital Technology and Grassroots Organizations
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table of contents
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright
  3. Contents
  4. Preface and Acknowledgments
  5. The Xi Jinping Effect: An Overview
  6. Part One: Taking Charge and Building Faith
    1. 1. Corruption, Faction, and Succession: The Xi Jinping Effect on Leadership Politics
    2. 2. Xi Jinping’s Counter-Reformation: The Reassertion of Ideological Governance
    3. 3. Fundamentalism with Chinese Characteristics: Xi Jinping and Faith
  7. Part Two: Socioeconomic Policies to Reduce Poverty
    1. 4. Xi Jinping Confronts Inequality: Bold Leadership or Modest Steps?
    2. 5. Pliable Citizenship: Migrant Inequality in the Xi Jinping Era
  8. Part Three: Surveillance and Political Control
    1. 6. Xi Jinping’s Surveillance State: Merging Digital Technology and Grassroots Organizations
    2. 7. Love through Fear: The Personality Cult of Xi Jinping in Xinjiang
  9. Part Four: Foreign and Cross-Strait Relations
    1. 8. Xi Jinping’s Taiwan Policy: Soft Gets Softer, Hard Gets Harder
    2. 9. Xi Jinping’s Diplomatic New Normal: The Reception in Southeast Asia
  10. Conclusion
    1. 10. Understanding the Xi Effect: Structure versus Agency
  11. Chinese Character Glossary
  12. Selected Bibliography
  13. List of Contributors
  14. Index

6 Xi Jinping’s Surveillance State Merging Digital Technology and Grassroots Organizations

Deng Kai, David Demes, and Chih-Jou Jay Chen

From Xi Jinping’s rise to power in late 2012 until the eruption of the COVID-19 pandemic in China and the rest of the world in 2020, the most significant change in Chinese politics and society was the authoritarian regime’s increasing suppression of civil rights and intensifying mass surveillance. Compared with the Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao eras, the Party-state under the strongman rule of Xi Jinping strengthened its control of civil society and tightened its censorship of both media and the Internet. In response to ongoing challenges by rights defense lawyers, nongovernmental organization activists, and various forms of collective protests, the regime implemented a severe and comprehensive crackdown.1

Xi Jinping’s regime has achieved comprehensive mass surveillance. The country’s current state of social surveillance is the product of a continuous process of institutionalization and infrastructure construction since the mid-2000s. Policy under previous leaders Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao (2002–12) prioritized “stability maintenance,” or social management to deal with collective resistance. In contrast, in response to increasing resistance and dissent, the Xi era elevates social protest management to total surveillance by mobilizing both traditional state apparatus and digital technologies.2

After 2015, the role of digital technology in social surveillance expanded rapidly. The COVID-19 pandemic serves as a case study to reveal the government’s strategy: mobilizing grassroots governments and communities and using digital technologies for effective population monitoring and control. This approach demonstrates both the continuity and discontinuity of the Chinese surveillance state under Xi Jinping’s leadership.

The Institutional Evolution of Mass Surveillance: From Hu to Xi

As the end of the Hu administration approached in 2011, the central government enacted the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011–15), which for the first time expressed the need to build a national population database to enhance the state’s intelligence gathering, social control, and emergency response capabilities.3 In November 2013, a decision of the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee pointed out that the particular characteristic of social governance was that it must “address both symptoms and root causes while emphasizing the root causes, using grid management to enhance the integrated system of service and management at the grassroots level.” This was the first time the term grid management (wanggehua guanli) had been mentioned in a policy document of the Central Committee.4

The 13th Five-Year Plan (2016–20) announced that the government would “establish a national database with basic information on the population” and “strengthen the construction of institutions such as population management, real-name registration, credit systems, and crisis early warning and intervention.”5 The document also proposed to “improve assessment and accountability mechanisms” of the government’s performance in the realm of social governance.6 In terms of grassroots governance, it prescribed to organically link “community, social organizations, and social workers” to achieve digitalized one-stop services and to increase the number of registered volunteers to 13 percent of the resident population.7

During the later years of Hu Jintao’s administration, the Chinese state utilized its capacity to penetrate society through the existing Party-state system. However, under the leadership of Xi Jinping, the state has expanded its reach by developing social organizations and mobilizing volunteers through Party branches while closely monitoring and suppressing groups such as religious groups, ethnic minorities, dissidents, and petitioners. The Cyber Security Law was passed in June 2017, legalizing the Public Security Bureau’s access to user data collected by private companies. This law strengthened and expanded data collection and surveillance under Xi Jinping’s leadership at the national level. Additionally, at a work conference in the same year, Xi Jinping called for building a cybersecurity defense line, raising the level of network security protection, and strengthening the defense of key information infrastructure. He also emphasized the need to achieve all-weather and all-round awareness, as well as effective protection.8

Methods employed by the Chinese surveillance state to achieve its goals include grassroots grid management, extensive digital surveillance, censorship by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), mandatory real-name registration, labor-intensive online monitoring, and social credit systems that evaluate individuals’ daily behavior. All of these components have become integral to the Chinese surveillance state during the Xi era.

Grid Management

For decades, the smallest units of the CCP’s top-to-bottom system of urban control were the “work units,” or danwei, in government agencies, factories, schools, and neighborhood or residents’ committees. However, China’s economic reform process broke up this “cellular society” centered around the work unit, leading to the emergence of large numbers of employees outside of it. Urbanization further fostered the emergence of a significant “floating” population.9 To address this shift, the grid management model was introduced as a novel approach to community governance in contemporary China. First implemented as experimental work in Beijing’s Dongcheng District in 2004, this social management model involves expanding the personnel of grassroots Party organizations, extending their coverage to residential buildings, and equipping them with advanced information technology tools to monitor and address the behavior of community residents.10 “Gridding” in China refers to the practice of subdividing a community into individual grid cells, which are then used as a unit for government management. At the grassroots level, all permanent fixtures within each grid cell are identified and coded. If any public security or criminal cases, group protests, or activities by persons considered sensitive occur within a particular grid cell, they are classified and coded.11 Each grid cell is assigned a supervisor, a police officer, and assistants. Each staff member is equipped with an intelligent terminal or smartphone that uses a particular grid management software system to record and instantly transfer information on the situation of all people inside the cell to the grid command center at the township level. If an incident occurs somewhere, the command center will send reinforcements to deal with it.

By the end of 2016, 93 percent of communities (villages) across China had adopted grid management.12 Grid assistants use a mobile app to upload information and report problems.13 They also recruit volunteers from various social groups to join the grid team. For example, in the Changping District of Beijing, hundreds of couriers were recruited as grid management volunteers, and their delivery schedule in the community was fully incorporated into the state’s daily grassroots governance.14

Grid management at the community level has become a significant source of infrastructural power for the surveillance state. Neighborhood committees gather information about social or physical disorder through real-time monitoring and grid worker patrols to identify incidents that require reporting. In this context, minor risks such as restaurant hygiene and waste management may be exaggerated or even fabricated to allow officials to “solve” them and improve their performance evaluations. Meanwhile, serious incidents such as mass protests may not be reported, as grassroots cadres may want to downplay such cases to create the illusion of good governance and avoid punishment.15 Moreover, while grid management can identify local protests at an early stage, it can hardly stop citizens, especially the urban middle class, from rallying to express common demands, as demonstrated by the “white paper” protests against the zero-COVID policy in late 2022.

Synthesizing Surveillance

Mass surveillance in China today includes Internet surveillance, video surveillance in public areas, and other tactics making use of digital technologies. Under Xi’s leadership, a significant step toward mass surveillance was the establishment of “synthetic operations centers” (hecheng zuozhan zhongxin) by public security departments across the country. First established in Hangzhou with the technology company Alibaba’s assistance in 2013, the centers were soon promoted nationwide.16 The synthetic operations centers integrate information from different departments within the Public Security Bureau, including cybersecurity, criminal investigation, and economic crime investigation units, together with information from the Skynet Project (Tianwang Gongcheng), composed of citywide surveillance cameras, as well as Internet user data collected by cybersecurity and other agencies. For example, Jiayuguan City in Gansu Province used big data provided by its synthetic operations center to integrate and analyze criminal cases. Reportedly, in 2017–19, the city assembled twenty-seven major categories, or about three hundred million pieces of data, and, through research and analysis, cracked more than 460 cases of fraud and theft, with more than thirty criminal suspects arrested.17

The synthetic operations centers primarily rely on intelligence collected by the surveillance infrastructure that has been established through the projects Safe City (Ping’an Chengshi), Skynet, and Bright-as-Snow (Xueliang). Safe City is a cyber prevention and control system based on government personnel and video surveillance. During the second term of the Hu Jintao administration (2008–12), each prefecture-level city in China set up a pilot site to test the Safe City project. After 2015, the project was expanded to a nationwide network. The Skynet project was built on the foundations of Safe City, but it increased the number of surveillance cameras and also added facial recognition to improve data analysis capabilities. In 2015, it was reported that the government’s blanket network of surveillance cameras in Beijing had achieved 100 percent coverage of all major streets.18 Although authorities have tried to present the system as a crime-solving tool, the extensive coverage of Skynet has obvious applications when it comes to tracking dissidents, petitioners, and protesters.

In 2016, following Skynet, the central government approved the Bright-as-Snow Project, which enables police, grassroots cadres, and security volunteers to view public surveillance videos and face recognition results in urban communities and villages via regular TV sets and smartphones. As with the twenty million Skynet cameras already in place throughout China’s urban areas, the Bright-as-Snow Project is pegged as a public safety measure to help detect all kinds of illegal behaviors more effectively. By 2020, the Chinese government was scheduled to have integrated public cameras into the online-sharing system, applying facial recognition technology to build a nationwide surveillance network to ensure public security.19

Through the synthetic operations centers and infrastructure projects such as Skynet and Bright-as-Snow, public security organs and grid management personnel, relying on video surveillance, as well as user data of Internet services, are able to achieve effective social surveillance.

Mass Surveillance under Xi

The implementation of mass surveillance in the Xi Jinping era began with the reformation of the State Internet Information Office into the Cyberspace Administration of China, or CAC, which places increasing emphasis on censorship and control of online activities. Under the auspices of Xi and the CAC, the state has largely successfully established the Internet real-name registration system and delegated the labor-intensive task of monitoring and censoring online activities to Internet companies. The state has also gradually established a social credit system to strengthen surveillance and control by rewarding “good” citizen behavior and punishing “bad” behavior.

The CAC as a “Super-Internet Party Branch”

On May 4, 2011, the State Internet Information Office was founded as the top state agency in charge of the supervision of online content.20 The institution was reorganized in 2014 and became the CAC. The CAC’s specific functions include the approval of news websites and content, the investigation and punishment of illegal content, censorship, and the control of video games and online publishing, videos, and other content. In addition to its in-house employees, the CAC has organized a huge team of volunteers. While these volunteers initially reported mostly fraudulent online behavior, the scope of their reporting responsibilities has been expanded to include politically sensitive content. Although the CAC does not have the authority to arrest people, it has the power to interview persons in charge, delete accounts, and shut down Internet service companies.

By 2014, various provinces and cities had established their own Internet Information Offices. Among them, the Beijing Internet Information Office has been instructed by the CAC to monitor the news content produced by China’s major news portals and social media sites such as Tencent, Sina, Sohu, Netease, and Phoenix.21 In addition, the Internet Information Offices of Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen are responsible for the news content websites in their jurisdictions.

In 2015, the CAC implemented the “Work Regulations on Interviews of Entities Providing Internet News Information Services.” These regulations specify that “the term ‘interview’ refers to the administrative act of a local Internet information office meeting the relevant person in charge, conducting a conversation that involves a warning, pointing out the problem, and instructing the person to rectify or correct their behavior when a serious violation of the law or regulation is committed by an entity providing Internet news information services.”22 Companies not only need to censor user-produced content but also are required to investigate content reported by netizens. They also are subject to annual inspections and daily assessments by the Internet Information Offices. Yet, it is not just the information companies themselves that are important as network monitoring forces. The Voluntary 50 Cent Party (Ziganwu), whose nationalist Internet users have been active on social media platforms since the 2000s, have been more successful in reaching Internet users with their patriotic rhetoric than state agencies have. Followers attack liberal Internet users’ arguments that challenge the regime.23 With the intervention of the Internet Information Office in the day-to-day operations of social media platforms, the Voluntary 50 Cent Party has likewise become an important force in reporting, censorship, and information gathering.

For example, on July 1, 2016, an editor at Tencent News made a typographical error that insinuated Xi had “flipped out” (fabiao) during an important speech (Xi Jinping fabiao zhongyao tanhua). This incident resulted in the transfer of supervisory power over Tencent from the Shenzhen Internet Information Office to the Beijing Internet Information Office. Authorities then used this incident to shut down many comment sections on social media and user-generated content channels on portals such as Sina, Netease, Sohu, and iFeng (Phoenix). This crackdown reduced the space for free speech and caused online portals that had become mainstream during the Hu administration to gradually become propaganda tools of the Party-state.24 Meanwhile, interviews with corporate personnel increased as the state tightened its ideological control. In 2015 and 2016, the Internet Information Offices conducted 820 and 678 interviews, respectively, with relevant companies across the country. The frequency of interviews increased dramatically, reaching 2,003 in 2017 due to the implementation of the Cybersecurity Law, which went into effect on June 1, 2017.25

In 2017, the government promulgated regulations on data management in Internet groups, making group founders of an online forum or chat group responsible for user comments circulating in those groups. For this purpose, companies are required to equip themselves with professional staff and technical capabilities to establish real-name registration of users, censorship of online discussions, and data security protection.26 After the implementation of these management regulations, many WeChat groups were repeatedly shut down and reopened, causing a digital limbo that became a common phenomenon. At the end of 2018, the CAC introduced twelve additional regulations to further govern postings on Weibo, WeChat group discussions, WeChat public platforms, followers’ comments, chat groups, forum communities, and more. These regulations increased state control over the Chinese Internet, extending from the public sphere to the confines of private chat groups.27 For example, in 2018, Q Daily (Haoqixin ribao), which was known as China’s last liberal online media outlet, received a rectification notice from the CAC requesting that the site shut down and reflect on its errors for one month.28 In November 2020, Q Daily’s app and official accounts on WeChat and Sina Weibo stopped receiving updates and appeared to be inactive.29 In another example, in April 2019, the CAC alleged that Sina “continued to spread illegal and harmful information such as sensationalizing misdirection, vulgar pornography, and fake news” and punished Sina by suspending its blog and news service for a month.30

As the CAC has become the key actor in China’s Internet governance, online public spaces are not only monitored and blocked by the state but also subject to surveillance by broad social forces. The CAC has proactively mobilized the masses by forming a large number of volunteer teams that far exceed the size of its in-house workforce. However, volunteers may report false and illegal information online, and swarms of netizens hurl insults at users who articulate liberal views or challenge official narratives. Under such conditions, the Internet police of the various Public Security Bureaus have additional time and energy to focus on monitoring the speech and activities of political dissidents.

In short, the CAC has effectively become the “Super-Internet Party Branch.” The institution represents the state’s significantly enhanced control over the Internet in the Xi era. Real-name registration, integration of platforms, and labor-intensive online surveillance, as well as the social credit system, are key developments under the CAC.

Real-Name Registration

Real-name registration is the most critical feature of social surveillance. It has been mandatory on China’s social media networks since 2012. After the widespread adoption of smartphones, SMS (Short Message Service) verification codes have become the standard method for real-name verification. Real-name registration was not only a clearly stated policy in the 13th Five-Year Plan’s chapters on social governance but was also further codified in China’s Cybersecurity Law that went into effect on June 1, 2017. As of 2015, there were still 130 million mobile phone users in China who had not yet completed real-name registration.31 In 2016, the authorities ordered their accounts blocked, requiring users to provide real-name authentication; failure to do so would result in permanent suspension of their accounts.32 A clear goal of achieving a 100 percent real-name registration rate was set for June 30, 2017.33

In February 2018, the state-funded and state-controlled Cloud Big Data Industrial Development Company in Guizhou obtained the rights to operate data storage facilities for Apple’s iCloud service in China.34 Since then, almost all mainstream Internet service applications in China have completed instituting real-name registration mechanisms. To comply with the Cybersecurity Law, in addition to Apple, companies such as Evernote, Microsoft, and Steam have all created separate Chinese versions and databases of their services. They are required to provide user data to the police upon request.35

The Labor-Intensive Digital Surveillance

In the Xi Jinping era, the number of mobile Internet users has increased from 420 million in 2012 to 1.051 billion in 2022, and their share of all Internet users in the country has also increased from 74.5 percent in 2012 to 99.6 percent in 2022.36 When smartphones connect to the Internet, they can disclose a lot of private information, including personal location, movement trajectories, daily routines, web surfing habits, key logging habits, speech, address books (analog social networks), and more. With the 2017 Cybersecurity Law, the state can harvest citizens’ personal information with the help of Internet companies.

In March 2019, the hacker and cyber activist Victor Gevers broke into the backbone network of China Telecom and discovered that it had been archiving chat records of large groups of users since 2018 from platforms such as Tencent QQ, WeChat, and Apple’s iMessage. The database included names, ID numbers, profile pictures, GPS locations, and network information, among other details. It was synchronized with the Public Security Bureaus of various provinces and cities for purposes of censorship and surveillance.37 This system shows that communication software companies, such as WeChat, provide data, while state-owned telecommunications companies, such as China Telecom, are responsible for integrating the data, and public security agencies conduct screening and manual reviews. The multiparty collaboration can be used to identify dissident networks and then suppress them further. It can also be used to directly silence online expression, meaning that users who engage in dissenting speech on WeChat may face banning, detention, and even criminal conviction. For instance, in 2017, Wang Jiangfeng, a petitioner from Zhaoyuan, Shandong, was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison for “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble” after he criticized Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong in a WeChat group.38 Furthermore, his defense attorney Zhu Shengwu had his law license revoked by the Department of Justice of Shandong Province after he released to the public information relevant to the case.39

Monitoring online content has become a labor-intensive industry for Internet companies. In 2013, a Reuters reporter visited Sina Weibo’s censorship office in Tianjin and found that the censors numbered as many as 150 people. The office operated on a rotating shift basis, with employees working twenty-four hours a day. Each censor was expected to review three thousand social media posts per hour.40 As of 2020, social media platforms have become more diversified and, as a result, content censorship efforts have increased in scale, becoming an obligatory burden for content media. The main focus of content censorship is on netizens’ responses to news posts. Often, a popular news item will attract hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of responses in a very short time. Jinan in Shandong has become known as the “content censorship capital,” as companies, including People.cn (affiliated with the People’s Daily), ByteDance, and iFeng.com (Phoenix), have all established their content censorship teams there. An investigative report by Southern Weekly in April 2019 later ordered to be deleted by the propaganda department, disclosed that ByteDance, which operates social media products such as Toutiao.com and TikTok, had an army of more than three thousand censors in Jinan alone.41 The job of a “content censor” requires young people who have a college degree, stamina, and good eyesight and can work late hours. Applicants should be able to identify sensitive information. However, such work can be extremely draining, even for young people, and Internet companies have seen a significant increase in personnel costs. In other words, both the state and the private sector have to bear heavy personnel and financial burdens to ensure the smooth operation of the surveillance state.

The Social Credit System

China’s social credit system can be divided into three categories. The first is “good citizen behavior,” which is spearheaded by the central government. The second is the traditional personal financial credit reporting system composed of banks, which provide critical information to assess a customer’s credit rating. The third category comprises unofficial private versions of social credit systems that are operated by companies such as Ant Financial’s Sesame Credit. Ant Financial is the payment firm that was spun out of Alibaba. These systems use shopping habits and other user data to inform credit-style scores on an opt-in basis.42 The private systems, such as Sesame Credit, are sometimes mistaken for government plans, but they are not officially part of the government’s system.

In 2016, China’s central government proposed a “unified social credit identifier system” in its policy outline. Specific policy ideas include giving priority in administrative procedures and public services to those with good credit records. In contrast, those who jeopardize public safety, disrupt public order, refuse to perform legal or military service obligations, and so forth should be considered as having poor credit records. Their access to public services or certain rights should be restricted.43 At a government meeting in June 2016, Xi Jinping talked about “establishing a pattern of credit punishment where ‘one dishonesty must lead to restriction everywhere,’ so that the dishonest people cannot do anything at all.”44 The punishments include restrictions on leaving the country, buying real estate, taking airplanes or high-speed trains, going on vacations, staying in star-rated hotels, and other high-spending consumer behaviors. Moreover, the state encourages relevant mass organizations, institutions, companies, associations, and so on to provide information generated by their “red lists” (with individuals worth praising) and “blacklists” (punished persons) to government departments for reference.45

There are many cases where social credit was used to “blacklist” certain people, such as the famous investigative reporter Liu Hu, who was subjected to judicial persecution for exposing corruption in 2013.46 Being placed on a blacklist can have serious consequences. In March 2018, the government announced that individuals such as Liu Hu, who were under investigation for administrative or criminal liabilities by the Public Security Bureau, would be prohibited from traveling by plane or high-speed train. Those who committed significant tax or financial violations would face similar penalties for a period ranging from several months to one year.47 At the end of 2018, there were a total of 14.21 million blacklist records in Public Credit Information Centers across China. The courts had issued 12.77 million entries on dishonest persons and prevented 17.46 million and 5.47 million attempts to purchase air and high-speed tickets, respectively. At the same time, in that year a total of 2.17 million creditors were removed from the blacklist after paying arrears and performing penance as ordered by the court. The courts recovered a total of ¥4.44 trillion.48

The social credit system is extensively used, mainly for regulating the behavior of individual citizens. In economic court cases, it provides judges with a basis for rulings and guarantees the enforcement of established regulations, ensuring the implementation of restrictions and penalties. Additionally, it can reward citizens with good credit.49 The promotion and implementation of the social credit system demonstrates the Chinese government’s ability and willingness to apply technology to state governance. However, while some polls and media interviews suggest that Chinese citizens generally support the government’s implementation of the social credit system and expect it to improve social trust, other sources report mixed views on this matter.50 Regulations and implementation of the social credit system still vary greatly from city to city across China. While government propaganda emphasizes the system’s potential to combat scams, fraud, and other issues, public opinion on the matter is divided. Some believe that the social credit system will improve public order and have a greater governance effect than moral persuasion alone, while others express concerns about the system’s potential misuse and infringement on privacy rights.51 However, even though citizens express high trust in the social credit system, their participation rates remain low due to concerns about the system’s algorithmic and information security risks and capabilities.52 The current literature remains cautious about the future of social credit systems, as excessive intervention may increase distrust between the state and society.

Changes in the Surveillance and Repression of Disadvantaged Groups

One of the key features of Xi Jinping’s rule has been the use of digital and mass surveillance to monitor and suppress disadvantaged groups, including petitioners, ethnic minorities, religious groups, and peasants. When the rights of disadvantaged social groups are violated by local governments, they often have no recourse but to protest against the higher-level governments. However, the local governments see them as troublemakers and subject them to surveillance and repression.

Petitioners

The top priority of local governments regarding petitions has been to reduce the number of petitioners, especially those involved in collective petitions or requesting intervention from higher-level governments (known as yueji shangfang, or “leapfrog petitions”). Local authorities have been instructed to coordinate with governmental agencies at all levels to identify potential petitioners and intercept them before they can file a formal complaint.

According to Chinese state media, the number of petitions lodged against the government dropped by about a quarter across China between 2013 and 2016. This figure was released during a major propaganda campaign to highlight the country’s achievements during Xi’s first five-year term.53 One reason for the decrease in the number of petitions received by relevant authorities was the announcement, in 2014, of new petitioning procedures by the National Public Complaints and Proposals Administration (NPCPA, or Guojia Xinfangju). Starting May 1 of that year, petition authorities would no longer accept in-person visits from petitioners who “skipped levels” (leapfrogged), while written petitions sent via the Internet or traditional mail would not be subject to such restrictions.54 The ban on leapfrog petitions and the new transparency regarding petition information have increased local governments’ willingness to address petitioner complaints. As a result, the number of petitions and visitors to the NPCPA in Beijing has significantly decreased.55

Furthermore, the promotion of “online petitions” has reduced the need for in-person petitions. Petitioners can now track their petitions online and check which departments are handling their cases, as well as learn about processing results. In the first half of 2018, the number of online petitions processed by the NPCPA accounted for more than 50 percent of all petitions, demonstrating that the Internet has become the primary channel for petitioning in China.56

Although changes to the petition system have reduced the number of petitioners, especially those who go to Beijing, they have shifted most of the pressure to local governments. As a result, petitioners often face violent interception and detention, on the one hand, and increased government control and mediation efforts, on the other. For example, the government uses digital monitoring to intercept petitioners. Not only are their WeChat conversations monitored, but they are also frequently harassed or detained by the police.57 In 2017, a facial recognition system was installed in the waiting area of Shanghai’s main railway station, and efforts to investigate and detect suspicious persons during key periods were strengthened.58

However, despite these measures, people still engage in leapfrog petitions. For instance, in November 2017, over two thousand private teachers from more than twenty provinces across the country went to petition at the Ministry of Education in Beijing. According to one petitioner, the authorities had intercepted many fellow petitioners through surveillance on WeChat. While digital surveillance and local grassroots stability control measures may have reduced the number of participants in the petition, they did not succeed in preventing it from happening.59 Another example concerns the petition of peer-to-peer (P2P) financial victims. In August 2018, many individuals who had suffered significant financial losses due to the collapse of P2P online lending platforms went to Beijing to petition the government. However, Shanghai police reportedly used special devices to search the contents of mobile phones in subways and railway stations, possibly in an attempt to intercept petitioners.60 Nevertheless, these preemptive measures failed to prevent all petitioners from traveling to Beijing.

Religious Groups

The Chinese government has been particularly severe in suppressing collective mobilization of religious groups. This is evident not only in the strengthening of social suppression in both Xinjiang (see Musapir’s chapter in this volume) and Tibet but also in the targeting of religious organizations and activities in Han-majority areas. For example, in 2013, Zhejiang launched an urban renewal campaign that specifically targeted the houses of Christians, which were deemed illegal structures. In just one year, 100 churches and 426 crosses were razed in Zhejiang alone.61 During the demolition process, dozens of protests by the affected communities and conflicts with the police occurred.

In 2018, observers noted the most severe religious repression in China in recent years. One of the earliest indications of this crackdown was the removal of Christian and Islamic books from online bookstores on March 30. The situation was particularly challenging in Henan, which has a sizable Christian population. Even the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, China’s state-controlled church, faced suppression there. In August of that year, the city of Yongcheng in Henan Province forced the temporary closure of 100 out of 180 Three-Self churches.62 Official justifications for the closures and demolitions of churches have varied, ranging from a supposed lack of parishioners to allegations that the churches were built illegally or located too close to government buildings and schools.63 In December 2018, China’s largest Protestant house church, the Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, was forcibly disbanded, affecting hundreds of parishioners. Its founder, Wang Yi, his wife, and several priests were either criminally detained or forcibly disappeared.64

In addition to heavy-handed clampdowns, new social surveillance methods have emerged in China. The state has intensified its investigation of the religious population and gained comprehensive access to their data, enabling the creation of big data platforms for surveillance purposes.65 For instance, in Henan Province, the government has launched the Religious Affairs Management and Service Platform to register and classify Protestants.66 Jiangxi Province has not only collected and documented basic information on religious sites but has also established Bright-as-Snow Project systems at these sites, which have instilled fear in many believers.67

Mass Surveillance in Times of COVID-19

During the COVID-19 pandemic from 2019 to 2022, surveillance facilities that were initially intended to target specific groups of people expanded their monitoring scope to include the general public. As a result, grassroots communities were able to monitor the entire local population in order to meet the requirements for pandemic control. For example, in Pinghu, a county-level city in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, China mobilized grassroots-level governments and communities to monitor and control its population during the COVID-19 pandemic.68

Grassroots Control: The Case of Pinghu

In 2019, Pinghu became the first city in Zhejiang Province to implement the so-called Red Property (Hongse Wuye) project, which aims to integrate government, residents, and construction companies under state leadership in small commercial housing communities. The implementation of Red Property has given grassroots community Party committees more power and organizational resources, extending control from the “grid manager” (wanggezhang) to the “hallway manager” (loudaozhang) of residential housing, resulting in even more finely tuned community control.69

On January 23, 2020, Wuhan, the epicenter of the pandemic, announced a citywide lockdown. However, one day before that, the Pinghu County Party Committee had already convened a meeting to convey instructions from their superiors and establish a leading group for pandemic prevention and containment work. Working groups were established in all subdistricts (jiedao) at the township level and in relevant departments, with their main tasks including improving hospital fever clinics and infection control, centrally regulating farmers’ markets and various business sites, strengthening disinfection and ventilation on public transport, and supervising large-scale public gatherings during the Spring Festival.70 On January 27, the Pinghu government established three checkpoints to carry out meticulous inspections based on the community grid. They took the temperature of drivers at road checkpoints and isolated people who had come into contact with infected persons. In addition to the cadres currently on the job, the government also mobilized veterans, retired cadres, and young volunteers to participate in this work.71 On January 31, the city of Pinghu established 162 temporary Party organizations and frontline posts (chongfenggang). Communist Party members were mobilized to assist at medical work posts and centralized isolation work posts, as well as to provide one-on-one care for home isolation and carry out inspection work at checkpoints.72 Despite all of these efforts, the number of newly infected people in Zhejiang continued to rise from the end of January to February in all cities, including Pinghu.

On February 3, the Pinghu government announced a lockdown of the city, refusing entry to individuals without local household registration and controlling the movement of people and vehicles entering or leaving the city.73 On February 6, the municipal government issued a public notice on closed community management, which relied on grassroots community and village Party committees for implementation. Specific measures included closing residential communities, isolating residents who had traveled through pandemic areas within the previous fourteen days, and escalating propaganda efforts.74

Besides controlling social activities and population mobility through community gridding, local governments were also under pressure to resume industrial production. To facilitate this resumption, the Pinghu government established an online platform for companies to declare their readiness to resume work and stationed Party and government officials in these companies. In early February, over two hundred officials were deployed to guide and supervise pandemic prevention measures, report difficulties to the municipal government, and assist companies in resuming production.75 The number of stationed cadres had increased to 709 by the end of the month.76 To address the labor shortage, the Pinghu government reached out to local governments in inland provinces to recruit workers, arranged transportation for returning workers through chartered buses and flights, and established mutual recognition of their respective health codes.

The Health Code: Data-Based Governance during a Pandemic

While many communities across the country remained under strict control in February 2020, business activities gradually resumed. At this time, the health code—a quick response (QR) code on a mobile phone rating the user’s risk of exposure to the coronavirus—began to play an essential role in the government’s containment efforts. The apps that facilitated the health code were hosted by China’s top technology companies: Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu. At checkpoints throughout the city, police and security guards demanded that anyone seeking to enter or leave must present the health QR code. A green code granted unrestricted movement, while a yellow code required seven days of quarantine, and red meant fourteen days of quarantine. To receive a rating, users must download an app embedded in one of the tech giants’ ubiquitous payment, messaging, or search engine platforms, which require users to register their basic personal information and health condition. By March, the codes were widely adopted by local governments, public facilities, businesses, and farms across the country. When the code is scanned, a limited amount of personal data is accessed through the phone. Some codes pull mobile phone data from telephone companies to see where the user has been, while others confirm personal health information, such as whether the user has completed a mandatory quarantine. The data used to generate the health code comes from three main sources: self-reported information, including personal details provided by users when applying for or updating their health code; travel information obtained through location-based services; and information provided by various institutions, such as the local government’s e-government system, the community e-pass, the city’s resumption of work application database, and the city’s fever clinic patient database. The system links and integrates this data and assesses the health status of residents according to rules and algorithms set by the local government. As such, it has become a digital tool for population control in various scenarios during the pandemic.77

The reason why China was able to build the health code system so quickly lies in the “national big data strategy” proposed by the Chinese government’s 13th Five-Year Plan in 2016. The strategic plan included an investment in resources to establish an information-sharing platform for government departments, aimed at promoting “industrial transformation and upgrade, as well as innovation in social governance.”78 The public data and e-government management measures of Zhejiang Province stipulate that public management and service agencies in Zhejiang should share public data with each other free of charge. Unless there is a legal, regulatory, or rule basis, these agencies are not allowed to refuse data-sharing requests from other agencies.79 Policies and regulations such as these help to break down information barriers between various government departments. Population databases, including those maintained by the police, medical services, and household registration departments, form the basis of government-owned data. When the government expresses a demand to enterprises with strong research and development capabilities, such as Alibaba and Tencent, these companies swiftly connect various databases and invest in their use. In other words, the extensive health code program was made possible because of the close cooperation and information sharing between these tech giants and the government.

The case of health codes is emblematic of the “data-based national governance” approach in contemporary China. The development of digital tools, their test runs, and their widespread promotion generally take only a few days to complete. With the help of these digital tools, the state has been able to greatly reduce costs while building a more comprehensive, accurate, and effective system of population control.

Conclusion

Under the leadership of Xi Jinping, the Chinese government has exhibited a greater obsession with control and repression than its predecessors. Protesters and dissidents are increasingly likely to be labeled as gangsters, prosecuted, and imprisoned under charges of picking quarrels and provoking trouble (xunxin zishi zui) and are subjected to surveillance and censorship under the guise of national security. The state has invested heavily in developing the infrastructure and technologies required for intrusive mass surveillance. New laws and regulations, such as the National Security Law and the Cybersecurity Law, have been introduced, and new government agencies, such as the CAC, have been established to monitor, control, and even arrest dissidents and protesters. The collusion between the state and businesses, as reflected in measures such as real-name registration, labor-intensive censorship, and social credit systems, has enabled the government to infiltrate society deeply. In particular, disadvantaged groups protesting rights violations are now subject to more comprehensive and effective surveillance and suppression than ever before.80

Xi Jinping’s regime has established a system of mass surveillance. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 provided the Chinese government with an opportunity to further enhance its extensive surveillance of the population, using invasive methods in the name of public health and safety. Officials quickly utilized the population’s smartphones to identify and isolate individuals who might have been spreading the virus. Few would dispute that such measures may infringe on the privacy and human rights of individual citizens. However, it is doubtful that the government’s monitoring apps will be fully disabled post-pandemic and fade into oblivion. Instead, they are likely to become a permanent fixture in everyday life, allowing the government to track down criminals and monitor potential protesters, as well as to collect and analyze instances of social discontent and specific demands.

Chinese politics can be characterized by a tendency toward responsiveness without accountability.81 While this is true in some cases, the white paper protests held in November 2022 against the government’s strict zero-COVID policy exhibited features of China’s “surveillance state.” Protesters who held up white sheets of paper during the demonstrations were later arrested based on facial recognition, the physical location of their cell phones, or their activities in private chat groups on social media. Some individuals even reported that photos of the protests were remotely deleted from their devices. The state’s response to the white paper protests has shown that when protesters express political demands, the state will use the power of its surveillance apparatus, such as closed-circuit television footage and individuals’ digital footprints, to identify and arrest them. This differs from the state’s response to protests with nonpolitical demands. While the authorities will still monitor and collect information on these protests, local and central governments will actively work to demobilize the protesters, and arrests are less common. In the era of mass surveillance under Xi Jinping, the surveillance apparatus has supplanted the information collection process. However, the state’s strategy of adopting different responses for different social groups to maintain stability and reduce social discontent remains unchanged, with surveillance technologies and grassroots organizations used to consolidate Communist Party rule. This trend has led some scholars to label China’s approach as “digital authoritarianism,” “digital totalitarianism,” or “digital Leninism.”82

Notes

This work is supported by the Grand Challenge Project of Academia Sinica, titled “Constructing Social Surveys under the Totalitarian Regime in Contemporary China” (grant no. AS-GC-111-H01).

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  23. 23. Rongbin Han, Contesting Cyberspace in China: Online Expression and Authoritarian Resilience (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018).

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  33. 33. “Zhongguo Zhengfu shoujin shouji shimingzhi.”

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  35. 35. Examples include the Chinese versions of Evernote and Steam, which separated from their holding companies in 2018 and 2021, respectively, to satisfy the Chinese government’s demands for the implementation of real-name registration.

  36. 36. “Di 50 ci ‘Zhongguo hulian wangluo fazhan zhuangkuang tongji baogao’ fabu” (The 50th “Statistical Report on the Development of the Internet in China” is published), Guangming Daily, September 1, 2022, http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2022-09/01/content_5707695.htm.

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  51. 51. “Cong dangandai dao xinyong pingfen.”

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  59. 59. Feng Gao, “Liangqian minban jiaoshi Beijing shangfang Jiaoyubu zaixian weiquan renhai” (Two thousand private teachers petition in Beijing: Ministry of Education again faced with huge crowd of rights defenders), Radio Free Asia, November 30, 2017, https://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/renquanfazhi/gf1-11302017104403.htm1.

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  62. 62. Tao Jiang, “San tian nei 21 zuo zhengfu guankong de sanzi jiaotang zao chafeng” (In a matter of three days, 21 government-controlled Three-Self churches were closed down), Bitter Winter, September 7, 2018, https://zh.bitterwinter.org/21-state-sanctioned-churches-shut-down-in-three-days-video.

  63. 63. Shuji Zeng, “Henan quansheng qingchai jiaotang shizijia qiangzhi gua guoqi gua Xi xiang” (In all of Henan churches and crosses are demolished or forced to hang national flags and pictures of Xi), Radio France International, September 6, 2018, https://www.rfi.fr/tw/中國/20180906-河南全省清拆教堂十字架強制掛國旗掛習像.

  64. 64. “2018 nian Zhongguo shehui kongzhi nianzhong zongjie” (2018 year-end summary of social control in China), Minsheng Guancha, February 19, 2019, https://www.msguancha.com/a/lanmu2/2019/0219/18358.html.

  65. 65. “2018 nian Zhongguo shehui kongzhi.”

  66. 66. Tao Jiang, “Henan mimi jianli zongjiao renyuan shujuku: Chaoxi fenlei shishi jiankong” (Henan secretly establishes database of religious personnel: Ultra-detailed classification, real-time monitoring), Bitter Winter, May 21, 2019, https://zh.bitterwinter.org/database-of-believers-established-in-henan.

  67. 67. Zhe Tang, “Xueliang Gongcheng shixian zongjiao changsuo neiwai quanfugai wu sijiao jiankong ling xintu kongju” (Bright-as-Snow Project to achieve full coverage inside and outside of religious venues: No-blind-spot surveillance stokes fear in believers), Bitter Winter, August 3, 2019, https://zh.bitterwinter.org/cameras-monitor-chinas-religious-venues-24-7.

  68. 68. Unless otherwise noted, the information in this section is based on Deng Kai’s field research in Pinghu. As a Pinghu native, he was stationed in Pinghu since returning to his hometown for the Spring Festival in 2020. Although it was not possible to conduct face-to-face interviews due to the epidemic, Deng observed the situation on the ground, collecting and verifying various messages from the government and the community.

  69. 69. Wei Xiao, “Pinghu fabu quansheng shouge ‘Hongse Wuye’ difang biaozhun” (Pinghu releases province’s first local standard for “Red Property”), Zhejiang Online, February 28, 2019, https://town.zjol.com.cn/cstts/201902/t20190228_9556182.shtml.

  70. 70. “Pinghu Shiwei Changweihui yanjiu bushu Xinxing Guanzhuang Bingdu ganran de feiyan yiqing fangkong gongzuo” (Pinghu Municipal Committee’s Standing Committee to study the deployment of prevention and control measures in face of COVID-19 outbreak), Pinghu Fabu WeChat Public Account, January 22, 2020, https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/3UH9yeCp7CQRgN77DUK8EA.

  71. 71. “Pinghu Shiwei Changwei (kuoda) huiyi zhaokai, dui yiqing fangkong gongzuo zai yanjiu zai bushu” (Pinghu Municipal Committee Standing Committee [extended] meeting held, again studying and deploying epidemic prevention and control measures), Pinghu Fabu WeChat Public Account, January 27, 2020, https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/CrqVuXWk47HzteyB189X3A.

  72. 72. “162 ge linshi dangzuzhi, Pinghu shixian yiqing fangkong qianyan dang de zuzhi quan fugai” (162 temporary Party organizations, Pinghu to achieve full coverage of Party organizations at the forefront of epidemic prevention and control), Pinghu Fabu WeChat Public Account, February 1, 2020, https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/frB71wolwakcVGmALGsy3g.

  73. 73. “‘Zhongyao tonggao’: Jiri qi, yange xianzhi fei Jiaxing shiji renyuan jinru Pinghu!” (“Important notice”: Beginning today, non–Jiaxing City residents are strictly restricted from entering Pinghu!), Pinghu Fabu WeChat Public Account, February 3, 2020, https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/QpwouE2d_J-NQLvSCr_1dA.

  74. 74. “Pinghu quanmian shishi xiaoqu fengbishi guanli!” (Pinghu to fully implement the locked-down management of communities!), Pinghu Fabu WeChat Public Account, February 6, 2020, https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/DGGHAJ97iid982a14PNMRA.

  75. 75. “Pinghu 200 duo ming ganbu bianshen ‘zhu qi zhidaoyuan,’ quebao qiye kai fu gong shengchan fangyi liangbuwu” (More than 200 cadres in Pinghu turned into “in-house instructors” to ensure that enterprises can resume production and also engage in epidemic prevention), Pinghu Fabu WeChat Public Account, February 9, 2020, https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/mCvrNaQNIEmdvUa6jJcozw.

  76. 76. “Pinghu 709 ming jiguan ganbu bianshen ‘HR renli ziyuan zhuli’” (709 cadres in Pinghu turned into “human resource assistants”), Pinghu Fabu WeChat Public Account, March 1, 2020, https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/eWXxPrNaitCKMQ2HmmRIZA.

  77. 77. “‘Zhuli yiqing zuji zhan’ Hangzhou jiankangma shi zenme shengcheng de?—Alibaba jiankangma xitong zhuli yiqing fangkong he fugong fuchan” (“Helping to stop the epidemic,” how is the Hangzhou health code generated?— Alibaba health code system to help epidemic prevention and control to resume work and production), Hangzhoushi Kexue Jishu Xiehui, February 26, 2020, https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/J1r0HMvJoKFtWG8ymhqnUg.

  78. 78. Zhongguo Zhengfuwang, “Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo guomin jingji he shehui fazhan di shisan ge wunian guihua gangyao,” 139.

  79. 79. Zhejiang Zhengwu Fuwuwang, “Zhejiangsheng gonggong shuju he dianzi zhengwu guanli banfa” (Public data and e-government management measures of Zhejiang Province), March 27, 2017, http://www.zjzwfw.gov.cn/art/2017/3/27/art_1177809_6090045.html.

  80. 80. Chen, “A Protest Society Evaluated”; Chen, “Peasant Protests over Land Seizures.”

  81. 81. Bruce J. Dickson, The Party and the People: Chinese Politics in the 21st Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021).

  82. 82. Sebastian Heilmann, “Leninism Upgraded: Xi Jinping’s Authoritarian Innovations,” China Economic Quarterly 20, no. 4 (2016): 15–22.

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