I’m putting this review on the blog not because there are dangling philosophical issues here, but because this book is so direct and exhaustive about its two most important themes:
- China is not a State with a party. The party is the State, and increasingly since 2012 and absolutely since 2018 Xi Jinping has become, like Mao before him and Stalin in the Soviet days, the chairman of the party for life.
- China, under Xi is embarking on a serious attempt (using everything modern technology can provide) to build the ultimate surveillance State! Further, there is nothing unrealistic about this effort. They are mostly there.
We Have Been Harmonized by Kai Strittmatter
This book is geopolitical in scope and theme. It is a warning to everyone but particularly the West concerning China’s international intentions and its present and future capacity to get what it wants. It is also about the West’s abetting China’s goals politically and especially economically. But make no mistake, China is not only a people and industrial power, a State with a government. The Chinese Communist Party and the State are synonymous, and since 2013, the CCP is more and more synonymous with the will of Xi Jinping.
As long as it is, this book is direct and to the point. Dr. Strittmatter does not spend chapters on Chinese history, alluding to it only where parallels pertain or narrative becomes part of the modern problem. There is enough reference to the period since 1949, and especially the cultural revolution (1966-1976) to bring a sense of what the Chinese people have been put through for the last three generations.
Following an unusual period of intellectual openness in the 2000s, China is, since 2013, constructing a now well-on-the-way-to-completion, ultimate surveillance State. Not only are AI-driven systems watching everyone from the outside, but citizens are being made to carry apps on their phones tracking everything from travel to conversation. It isn’t possible even to opt-out because doing so in itself brands you as an enemy of China and blocks you from any travel, jobs, apartments, and so on. Nor does complying with authorities guarantee your good standing. You will be docked social credit points if you do or say something you should not. If this isn’t bad enough, what counts as good or bad behavior or speech is at the daily whim of the CCP and Xi in particular.
Strittmatter cites many examples and drills the multi-faceted nature of the CCP program home. If the system isn’t quite finished (it is not), it soon will be. But this isn’t the end of the story. The Chinese are doing their very best to extend this ability overseas! Chinese citizens must travel with these apps and connect them to foreign Internets tracking them anywhere on Earth. When the Trump administration tried to ban certain Chinese-centered payment apps there was a huge outcry! Part of this came from Americans who now use those same apps, but a good measure was Chinese-sponsored propaganda. If the apps were blocked, the CCP would lose its best foreign surveillance asset!
So far, in many instances, foreign governments and corporations have backed off when China cries foul. The core motive is dollars flowing from China into NGOs on foreign soil and into the coffers of the world’s largest corporations (other autocratic governments can be paid directly). Unlike Russia, the Chinese, particularly the CCP which commands more capital than any other single entity in the world, is rich enough to buy much of what they want, including good press, and Western corporations are only too happy to sell it to them.
“We Have Been Harmonized” is about all of this and more. Strittmatter delves into the effect this is having on the psychology of the Chinese people. He hopes, of course, that this will not go on for very long, but he does not see any end to it. There is nothing to suggest the CCP will not ultimately succeed within China. He is not so hopeful about the world outside of China either. Democracy is under assault everywhere. Even where not Chinese-influenced, the present internal struggles, political polarization, and populism play into CCP hands, some greased by the money China is throwing around. Everyone working in Western executive and legislative institutions should read this book!
Ruminations 