A State of Strict Regime. Inside the Chinese Digital Dystopia

China has built the most sophisticated system of total control over its population in human history. The testing ground for this experiment has been Xinjiang — a region in the northwest of the country where Turkic-speaking Uyghurs live. Digital technologies... have given the state unprecedented capabilities to surveil and punish: from pervasive surveillance cameras with facial recognition capabilities to internet monitoring and algorithms that allegedly can predict future crimes. Say or do something that displeases the authorities — and you could end up in a camp or vanish without a trace. American journalist Jeffrey Kane visited Xinjiang and spoke with dozens of Uyghur refugees — researchers, activists, and ordinary people who managed to escape from the police state. This book is a unique testimony about life inside a dystopia and a powerful warning of how authoritarian regimes, in alliance with technological corporations, threaten our freedom.