How China Turned a City into a Prison

I live in China for 10+ years now, and I believe it is turning the whole country into a prison. Here are some of my observations from Shanghai:<p>- while walking 1.1km from my home to the subway station, I counted 47 cameras, and probably missed 10 or so, not counting 20-25 cameras inside the subway station,<p>- every few days in the morning the police will block the subway entrance and check documents, I get checked every time probably because I have a bit of a beard,<p>- for the last month, I&#x27;ve been stopped in the street twice to check documents,<p>- for the last 5-7 years every bag has to be scanned when entering subway, and Q3&#x27; 2019 full body scanners will be rolled out,<p>- our neighbors complained that we receive &quot;too much&quot; delivery packages, so the police came to search our house (no warrant needed), they had a printout of all my online orders (no warrant needed) and my chats (no warrant needed), and they keep asking &quot;where do we spend our money&quot;,<p>- car horns are prohibited now within the 2nd Ring, and the offenders&#x27; plate numbers are displayed over the city — think about the technology of identifying car plates in a 30+ million city traffic by horn sound,<p>- jaywalking is prohibited and offenders get penalties to their social credit,<p>- a new app called &quot;study the word of Xi Jinping&quot; is almost compulsory, my wife&#x27;s mom is calling us often to make sure we &quot;study&quot;, her Party unit gets points for this, and if we don&#x27;t &quot;study&quot;, my wife will be kicked out of the Party with many consequences,<p>- my wife&#x27;s brother is on the blacklist for high-speed train and air travel because he bankrupted his company and couldn&#x27;t pay back the loan, he lives in the West and has to travel for 3 days with a slow train to visit his family...<p>Not saying these things are black or white, but this is certainly a scary direction and it gets more and more oppressive day by day.

Google&#x27;s pursuit of Dragonfly is only going to exacerbate this situation and they will actively be complicate in the censorship of these human rights violations and further enable the Chinese government&#x27;s ability to suppress dissent.<p>When Google left China they did so because they had &quot;...evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.&quot;[0]<p>Since then, by Google&#x27;s own numbers, the Chinese government has become significantly more suppressive and demanding: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;transparencyreport.google.com&#x2F;government-removals&#x2F;by-country&#x2F;CN?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;transparencyreport.google.com&#x2F;government-removals&#x2F;by...</a><p>Given the status quo, what message does it send to the Chinese government that Google is willing to backtrack on their statements and work with a government that is even more evil than the one they left? It&#x27;s naïve to think that the Chinese government won&#x27;t use Google&#x27;s re-entry as a tool for suppression, and it&#x27;s also naïve to think that Google doesn&#x27;t understand this. Their greed will only further facilitate these human rights abuses.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;googleblog.blogspot.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;01&#x2F;new-approach-to-china.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;googleblog.blogspot.com&#x2F;2010&#x2F;01&#x2F;new-approach-to-chin...</a>

I liked the graphics heavy style of the article. Also, it doesn&#x27;t touch upon the brutality of the indoctrination camps. There are reports of them being forced to eat pork, forced marriages,etc. I wonder if this is the closest we can get to NK outside NK.

I don&#x27;t get why China is taking these extreme measures. I know there&#x27;s a general feeling of anxiety towards Muslims (I&#x27;m Muslim) and I understand that China worries about these sorts of cultural issues. But this is really heavy-handed. Can someone explain this to me?<p>Of course, I should make clear that I completely condemn this type of behavior from <i>any</i> country. And point out that letting China get away with this means many other countries will do the same.

Have you wondered why Xinjiang is like this now? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Xinjiang_conflict" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Xinjiang_conflict</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Turkistan_Islamic_Party" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Turkistan_Islamic_Party</a>

As technology workers our influence on the world around us is outsized in many ways. At some point we have to get more heavily involved in building civil society in local and global ways. Live and let live is a great mantra but it is failing because we don’t excercize the influence we have in ways that can prevent these things from happening. If Facebook is toxic it can and should be forced to change. If the Chinese state is complicit in such large scale crimes against humanity then it’s ability to trade with us can be severely curtailed to influence behaviour. Consider California alone passing laws that prohibit investment or even trade with companies who have investment from such states. The change will be swift.

Good lord, that place is unbelievably dystopian. If it wasn&#x27;t real, I would have called it a bad Orwellian fiction.<p>Dozens of security cameras everywhere, inside shops, streets, and even the mosque. Mandatory government id, tied to a facial recognition regime. No shortage of well armed police, and plenty of fear.<p>From another article: &quot; 120,000 Uighurs are being held in Chinese political reeducation camps in Kashgar prefecture alone, according to Radio Free Asia (RFA). Guards force detainees to sing patriotic songs, bombard them with propaganda, and require them to study “Xi Jinping Thought.” Beijing does not publicly acknowledge the existence of these camps, yet Uighur activists estimate 1 million Uighurs have been detained since April 2017. &quot;<p>Given this climate, I find it hard to believe that this is the only activities going on behind the camp doors.<p>If there was ever something the US should condemn China for, it&#x27;s this.

When will founders decide that accepting Chinese VC funding is unethical? The money feeds back into a system that gives human rights very little value.

The UI is a bit funky and makes it hard to know when you can press the &#x27;next&#x27; button when you are trying to do it as early as you should

Although I personally find this pretty nightmarish yet I still can acknowledge it makes some sense and there probably is quite a number of people who would prefer to live in a surveillance-heavy police-state city (willing to trade privacy for guaranteed lack of criminals around). So I believe such a city should exist in every country just for them (in fact the more different kinds of places to choose from there are in a country - the better) as long as people outside don&#x27;t get discriminated and as long as people who lived in the city before the surveillance system implementation are well-assisted and compensated in moving out.

&gt; The police sometimes take Uighurs&#x27; phones and check to make sure they have the compulsory software that monitors calls and messages.<p>Wow, this is the definition of a modern police state. Sounds like a dystopian video game.

This article looks like digital “rags” should, its editorial, but the rich media, subtle sound, really bring it to life. It could do with a bit more text and details, but the format in general is stellar.

What bothers me about HN is how people here are afraid to criticize the Chinese government and their authoritarian regime. We should be fearlessly talking about it. What happens here is the “softening” of opinions either by A) Comparing with America B) Somehow justifying authoritarian governments by observing success and economic progress in Shanghai&#x2F;Shenzhen.<p>I feel that Googlers inside of Google has the same type of environment but with combined strong business justification to oppose project DragonFly.<p>HN is one of the most intellectual communities in the internet, I love reading comments just about anything here. Except for this topic - I despise HN in this regard.<p>In the past, I was told by moderators to not post any inciting comments that are about China because it ends up being USA vs China. What a shame...While I agree that the conversation becomes toxic, what’s the point of a community where I cannot freely express criticism of a government that takes a lot of risk by real journalists to put stories like this in front of the world.

&quot;Today, on &#x27;Real-Life Dystopias&#x27;...&quot;