About the Book
How China used a network of surveillance to intern over a million people and produce a system of control previously unknown in human history
Novel forms of state violence and colonization have been unfolding for years in China’s vast northwestern region, where more than a million and a half Uyghurs and others have vanished into internment camps and associated factories. Based on hours of interviews with camp survivors and workers, thousands of government documents, and over a decade of research, Darren Byler, one of the leading experts on Uyghur society and Chinese surveillance systems, uncovers how a vast network of technology provided by private companies―facial surveillance, voice recognition, smartphone data―enabled the state and corporations to blacklist millions of Uyghurs because of their religious and cultural practice starting in 2017. Charged with “pre-crimes” that sometimes consist only of installing social media apps, detainees were put in camps to “study”―forced to praise the Chinese government, renounce Islam, disavow families, and labor in factories. Byler travels back to Xinjiang to reveal how the convenience of smartphones have doomed the Uyghurs to catastrophe, and makes the case that the technology is being used all over the world, sold by tech companies from Beijing to Seattle producing new forms of unfreedom for vulnerable people around the world.
150 pages (paperback)
Published on October 12, 2021
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This book was sent by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
I have put off writing this review for a while because I’m not even really sure how to start it. There is a lot I could say, and a lot I want to say, and I know I won’t be able to say any of it here. This book left me with some very heavy thoughts, and it’s taken some time to process it. It’s horrifying, thought provoking, and uncomfortable, but also really important.
What amazed me, perhaps more than almost anything else, is just how much information Darren Byler packed into 150 pages. Perhaps it is because I am an editor of speculative fiction books, which are known for being absolutely massive, but 150 pages is almost nothing to me these days. I was honestly a little disappointed by the size of the book until I started reading it and realized that the small page count in no way means a lack of content, or an overview (my two concerns with shorter nonfiction books). What is included here has been carefully chosen for maximum impact and the substantial information it provides. 150 pages doesn’t leave a lot of room for extrapolation or navel-gazing on the author’s part. Here, we get a book with all the fat trimmed off.
In the Camps starts with a bang. A student from the University of Washington went home to visit family, and ended up accidentally straying outside of the zone she was allowed to be in. She was caught on camera, and subsequently arrested by a host of police officers, and then sent to the camps where primarily Uyghers, Hui, and Kazakhs are taken for “re-education”. From this point, Byler takes readers on a whirlwind journey of these camps, where many people are arrested under the shadowy umbrella of “pre-crimes”, and shows readers how technology is used to target certain populations.
Byler has interviewed numerous people to write this book, all of them free and safe when he interviews them. Through their eye-witness accounts, slowly the picture of the police state, the technological overlords, and life in the camps becomes painfully clear. While there are obvious advantages to technology, for those in the ethnic and cultural groups being suppressed, technology is a weapon, and I felt the slice of that blade keenly as I read this book.
It starts, as most things do, with surveillance. In Xinjiang, all individuals who belong to suspect ethnic groups are brought in for a “health check”. At this health check, pictures, iris scans, DNA samples, fingerprints and the like are taken by authorities. But it doesn’t stop there. Cell phones are procured, and information on them downloaded, including pictures and address books, social media interactions are monitored and the like. It all goes into a massive database where all this information is kept and can be extracted by those with access in less than a second. If, for example, someone is caught on camera straying from their neighborhood, and their face is pinged in the database, they will, like the woman at the start of this review, be arrested on the grounds of “pre-criminal activity.”
Chinese state authorities have circulated lists detailing signs of “Islamic extremism” with things on them as mundane as having religious content on their phone or downloading WhatsApp. These lists function as a sort of vague umbrella which can be used to justify almost any arrest of any individual. The ultimate goal here is, of course, to break these ethnic groups free from their identities and make them truly Chinese.
Then, they are brought to the camps, where they are forced to share beds, sit in re-education classes where they learn patriotic songs, and must speak in Mandarin Chinese, a language many do not know. Numerous cameras in each cell records their every movement. Beatings happen regularly and often without reason. They are allowed to shower once a week. Food is given, but the amounts of it are small, so hunger is rampant. The lights in the cells never turn off, which makes sleeping difficult. If prisoners are released, they are sent to their own neighborhood, where neighbors spy on them and monitor their activity. Added to that, anyone can be re-arrested at any time for any reason, so while they might be free from the camps, they are never truly "free" again.
From this point, Byler goes up the chain a bit, and by doing this, it quickly becomes clear that everyone is operating on fear, an epidemic of it. If the minders of these prisoners aren’t appropriately enthusiastic about their duties, then they will be forced to undergo the same treatment as the prisoners they are overseeing, a fate none of them want. Furthermore, they can’t quit, because if they do, they will end up in re-education camps as well. That fear doesn’t stop there. Up the chain it goes, with everyone required to show proper enthusiasm and patriotic zeal, lest they end up in the camps as well. Added to that, everyone is watching and reporting on everyone else, so trust is low, and anxiety is both toxic and high.
This is not the first communist system I've read about that functions on an epidemic of fear, where everyone is suspect, and everyone also functions as both spy and informer when needed.
Factories have been set up to take advantage of the labor provided by those in the camps. When journalists ask questions or ask to tour the area, the prisoners are told what to say and how to act. Thus, the journalists and human rights workers are shown, basically, the best side of things that the government can put forward. In some ways, it reminded me a bit of the North Korean border towns. Empty, save for the people assigned to work in them, keeping them clean and well-maintained, so everyone looking in can see how idealistic life is there.
Byler talks to a lot of people, all of whom have been part of the camp system and were either released or escaped. He also talks to authorities and chases the roots of this system down to 2014, in a campaign to end terrorism, and shows how things have evolved from that point.
In the Camps was haunting intersection of technology and politics. Reading this felt like was stepping into an Orwellian nightmare. Part horrifying, part futuristic hellscape, this book, while short, is mighty.
5/5 stars
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