We have been harmonised - A Review

Book written by: Kai Strittmatter

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Synopsis: In China's shiny new 'Smart Cities', citizens can scarcely cross the road or buy an orange without the government knowing about it, and tweeting satirically about the Glorious Leader's dumpling-like features can land you in jail. It is often assumed that capitalism and the internet automatically bring freedom and democracy. But Strittmatter shows how China's autocratic leaders are using powerful new technologies to create the largest and most effective surveillance state the world has ever seen.

Abstract: We have been harmonized provides us with a deep incision into the inner workings of the Chinese police state. It carefully details how surveillance got to such a mind-bogglingly

scary place and what implications it has on humans around the world. Although at times it can feel somewhat information-heavy it is truly an enjoyable read for the intellectual that lives in all of us.

Full review:

My eyes darted carefully between stacks of books lodged closely together along the library's bookshelves. I had come here to seek sanctuary in the knowledge that was buried in these books. After about half an hour of browsing. I had picked out a few books to devour at home. Just as I was about to leave the library, I saw a little logo of a closed-circuit television in the corner of my eye. I picked up the book the title read, "We have been harmonised". Whether it was by instinct or otherwise, I decided to borrow this book as well. I will be breaking down the review by the chapters of the book. I will start by talking the first few chapters and will continue doing likewise for the rest of the review.

The first three chapters are named, The Word, The Weapon and The Pen respectively. Overall throughout these 3 chapters, Strittermatter gives us a brief history lesson on how China has used language, the law and propaganda to keep its citizens in check. Before reading this book I highly recommend checking out George Orwell's book "1984", as Kai draws many parallels between the dystopian world depicted in Orwell's "1984" and China. Throughout the book, Strittmatter never devolves to hyperbole, although some of the things he says may seem exaggerated, he backs up all of his claims with relevant examples or statistics. This can be seen in The Weapon where he uses the example of Wang Yu, a prominent civil rights lawyer and how the party made her suffer tremendously going so far as to torture her and broadcast a live "confession" of her misdeeds to the entire nation, simultaneously humiliating her and also serving a warning to those the party deemed were detrimental to the "harmony " of China. As chilling as this might sound, Strittmatter provides countless other examples that may have a similar effect on readers.

The fourth is called The Net and the subtitle is " How the Party Learned to Love the Internet". This chapters details how the party took something that was meant to be its kryptonite, a medium through which anonymous free expression could take place, and modified it to ensure that that never happened. Strittmatter also talks about the few years when China was in a buffer state before Winnie the Pooh took over where there was a free internet and how in those few years, the citizens had benefitted. One of the case studies is of Yang Dacai , a functionary from the Shaanxi province. Strittmatter details how sleuths used keen observations and the internet to uncover corruption in the Party. Kai ends the chapter on a depressing note when he entails how Xi has changed everything for the worse. He states, "China has built a net using hardware and software completely independent from the rest of the world. Today, China's net is more an intranet than it is an internet."

He then goes on to explain how the great firewall of china works, with its thousands of censors scouring the web for the slightest hint of dissent.

“[L]’histoire est juste peut-être, mais qu’on ne l’oublie pas, elle a été écrite par les vainqueurs” or “[T]he history is right perhaps, but let us not forget, it was written by the victors”. Strittmatter 5th chapter reminds us how the party has been able to bend history to its liking. The prominent example in the 5th chapter, The Clean Sheet, being that of the Tianmen Square massacre in 1989. It also shows how people have been forced to forget. Kai writes, " overall the propaganda campaign has been a resounding success. Nobody below the age of fifty has any real idea about the things that happened under Mao". He drives the nail into the coffin by giving the example of a journalist, who while working for the state news agency had access to archives that indicated that during "the great leap forward" under mao that there were close to 45 million people cannibalised.

Chapter 6, The Mandate from Heaven walks the reader through the life of Xi Jinping. It talks about the power Xi wields and how the Chinese Winnie the pooh doppelganger has become basically the Emporer of China. To illustrate this, Kai gives us an example of Jiangxi, Yugan County. This is a place where many Christians reside and also a place where officials have forced people to remove pictures of Jesus and forcibly replaced them with pictures of Xi.

The subsequent chapters, The Eye and The New Man play close attention to technology. The eye talks about how China has come to the forefront of artificial intelligence technology and how it is using this technology to keep an eye on its citizens. Kai talks about the role that private companies from around the world have looked to cash in China's surveillance programme from the likes of apple to google. China's end goal being to be able to predict crimes before they happen. The New Man then details how " big data and a social credit system are meant to turn people into good subjects." The social credit system has raised uproars all over the world. However, as expected this is unlikely to change China's plans the slightest. At face value, the plan may seem too ambitious, track every citizen and give them points based on good behaviour and deduct points based on bad behaviour, good and bad being deemed by the party. Sounds ridiculous right, well China has shown that it is already possible, by running pilot programmes all over China. This plan to become omnipresent stinks of human rights violations, but if there was one country who wouldn't be affected by violations, it would be China. Kai goes deep to explain to his readers the myriad of ways in which the social credit system is going to be used. Kai goes so far as to suggest that the country with a huge imbalance of young male to the female population due to the one-child policy could have instances where parent in-laws may inquire about the son in laws social credit score to decide on who should get their daughters hand in marriage.

After talking about such a depressing state of affairs, Strittermatter tries to give some hope in the chapters, The iron house and The Gamble. In these chapters, Kai details how a minority is fighting back and how the party's enormous power may be its own downfall. The sad thing bout these chapters is that they're relatively short, indicating that there is no real hope and that these chapters are just there to appease the reader's mind.

The last two chapters The World and The Future bring the book to an end by instilling pure horror on the reader. The chapters highlight the many ways that China is pushing its influence overseas, paying poorer countries to basically get them more votes in different conventions, be it the EU or the UN. Strittmatter ends of the book by talking about the future and how inaction by countries against china will likely result in devastation for future generations all over the globe.

Overall I found that we have been harmonised was a wonderful read. I had been expecting it to contain a lot more information about the social credit system but to my surprise, it is a very well rounded book that answers all the questions a newbie like me would have about China.