China’s template of controlling citizens will be useful for governments in other countries to copy and implement its Orwellian systems.
By
03 Nov 2009
China exemplifies what economist Meghnad Desai might refer to as Marx’s revenge. China has a unique political and economic system—undemocratic, with a central command and control structure but one that welcomes foreign investment and globalisation, a convergence of socialist and American industrial cultures, if you will.
Even in the hay days of the Soviet Russia, USSR and China did not see eye to eye, even though both countries were supposed to be communist regimes. After the dissolution of the USSR, Russia embraced western-style capitalism (with strong oligarchic influences). But China had begun to open up its economy much before USSR’s implosion. To get rich is glorious, Deng Xiaoping had declared, casting away the old notion that socialism equals poverty.
In fact, communism had not failed with the death of USSR, as Desai explains it in his book, Marx’s Revenge—The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism (Verso, 2002). What USSR achieved was not the communism propounded by Marx. Capitalism would not go away until it had exhausted its potential. It had not and it has not.
Desai notes that the limits of capitalism would be reached when it is no longer capable of progress. “The information technology revolution has just begun,” he writes. “What more may come we do not know—biotechnology, new materials, outer space as colonisable land. The whole world is not yet fully integrated into global capitalism.”
In this IT-aided stage of global capitalism (globalisation), China is a leading actor, the way the US was in the last century.
As China is industrialising itself at a scorching pace (even in this year of recession it will probably achieve an eight per cent growth rate) and the farmers are becoming cheap factory hands, a state needs a tough hand to immediately quell any kind of unrest.
Apart from its superlative police and military force, the country is also harnessing the power of IT to control its huge population—the cheap labour that it needs to supply to its capitalists and the middle class (bourgeoisie) that it needs to oil the engines of globalisation.
The Great Firewall
One way China exercises control over its citizens is through ownership of the propaganda machinery and media censorship. The media (print, TV) is controlled by the state. For the educated Internet-savvy masses, it allows only limited access to the Internet. You might have heard from your friends in China how they are not able to access certain Internet sites.
China even wanted to install Internet filtering software on all computers in the country. It was called the green dam project and its implementation was postponed due to immense criticism. The Chinese government claimed that the technology would curb access to pornography, but Internet users said it would block politically sensitive content and would be used to track people’s behaviour. Did I hear thought-policing?
Recently, ahead of its 60th anniversary of communist rule, China again clamped down on the Internet, blocking free access to the Internet.
Another notable example of the state’s heavy control is the situation in Xinxiang. IDG reported that nearly four months after deadly ethnic riots in China's Muslim region led authorities to shut off the Internet there, local residents are still barred from sending text messages and getting online.
The report said the clampdown on telecommunication in China's western Xinjiang province, where rioting claimed nearly 200 lives in early July, has hurt local businesses and cut residents off from many non-government sources of news and other information.
But the state’s control is not limited to the media and the Internet. The overall goal seems to be able to control the urban population and build smart cities where everything, including individuals, can be tracked all the time.
For this purpose, China is building technologically-equipped urban systems because cities are relatively manageable microcosms of systems that operate globally. For example, for the city of Guangzhou, China picked IBM to manage its four commuter lines, 60 stations and 116 kilometres of track, and help make the transit system more intelligent and environmentally friendly.
China’s template of controlling citizens will be useful for governments in other countries to copy and implement its Orwellian systems. The only difference is that governments in other countries will need democratic means of deception to manufacture the consent of its citizens.
Zafar Anjum is the online editor of MIS Asia dot com. These are his personal views.
