And so it begins. The first review of the SURVEILLANCE STATE appeared in the June 15 issue of Kirkus Reviews:
Chin and Lin, veteran reporters on China for the Wall Street Journal and other outlets, have spent enough time in the country to effectively trace the development of an extraordinary surveillance system, a defining feature of the Xi Jinping era. It began in Xinjiang province, supposedly to keep track of Uyghur dissidents, but the Communist Party leaders quickly saw the broader potential…[T]hey paint a grim, disturbing portrait that deserves close scrutiny, especially as the technology becomes more precise and easier to deploy. While tech giants in the U.S. “exploit this technology for profit…the Communist Party has adopted it as a means to maintain power.”
The underside of digital technology on full, frightening display.
Read the full review here.
That was followed a short while later by this great review from Publishers Weekly:
Wall Street Journal reporters Chin and Lin debut with a rigorous and alarming study of how the Chinese Communist Party uses surveillance technology to monitor residents and quell dissent…Throughout, Chin and Lin expose the role of U.S. tech companies in developing China’s surveillance tools and draw vivid profiles of Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Uyghur rights activists, and others. This wide-ranging and deeply informed study offers crucial insights into the rising threat of digital surveillance.
See that review in its entirety here.
Fascinating as a first time author to see different reviews hone in on different pieces of the book: technology in the case of Kirkus, and the contrast between Xinjiang and Hangzhou in the case of Publishers Weekly. A good start…