Building a national system of social governance (guojia zhili tixi), which is the long-running governance dream of Xi Jinping, has triggered the creation of China's 'smart state' using the tools of new information technologies to advance governance capacity (zhili nengli). These systems were already deployed nationally when the COVID-19 pandemic hit China, but were connected at a lesser capacity, targeting specific domains of security, industry or government administration. In response to the crisis, multiple technologies have been merged, exceeding the scope of their originally intended functions. This is known as function creep, when surveillant technologies remain functional past achievement of their intended purpose, or surveillant assemblages, where multiple surveillant technologies are combined. As more countries turn to digitalisation to increase public security and intensify social and market governance, the expansion of surveillant functions in China and their now-palpable effects on people's lives raises new and pressing questions for scholars and decision-makers alike.
ObjectivesThe human specific commercially available STRs system are often not tested in non human primates for their cross applicability. The aim of this study is to test Cross-species validation of two commercially available human specific STR kits i.e. SureID® 21G and SureID® 23comp (Health Gene Technologies) for their positive application in Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes).ResultIn SureID® 21G, 19 loci amplified and while 20 loci amplified in SureID® 23comp. All the amplified loci in both STR kits were found polymorphic and the locus Amelogenin showed differential banding patterns between male and female revealing their known gender. The present study validates the applicability of these human specific STR kits in Chimpanzee that can be used in forensics analysis, paternity testing and population genetic studies.
Xi Jinping’s ascent to power as Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was accompanied by changes in national governance strategies in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that have progressively incorporated the use of big data. Shortly after, in May 2015, the Chinese State Council released a set of policy reforms under the abbreviation fang guan fu 放管服 (decentralise, manage, and service). These reforms promoted big data led (1) market regulation, (2) supervision and management systems, and (3) service provision processes. By applying a case study analytical approach, this paper explores how advancements in big data contributed to these reforms aimed at centralising information in China. Combining the joint knowledge of surveillance and China studies scholarship, this paper offers evidence of big data surveillance streamlining China’s fragmented intergovernmental policy system. We build on David Murakami Wood’s 2017 outline of a political theory of surveillance and argue that decentralisation of data collection points and centralisation of both bureaucratic and public access to information are key components of the Party-state’s regulatory governance strategy incorporating the use of big data and comprehensive surveillance. Our findings have implications for future analyses of the relationship between political organisations and surveillance within other nation-state contexts, particularly in situations where Chinese technologies and systems are being adopted and adapted.
Xi Jinping's 习近平 regard for socialist buzzwords and phrases is legendary. The China Dream 中国梦, the Four Comprehensives 四个全面, The Party Leads Over Everything 党是领导一切的, and, more recently, Common Prosperity 共同富裕 are a few of the more popular framing devices for Xi's ambitious agenda. But in terms of its ability to encapsulate precisely what is happening on the (political) ground in the People's Republic of China (PRC) and reflect the Party-State's raw ambitions, there is one in Xi's lexicon that rules them all: Modernisation of Governance Capacity 治理能力现代化. This phrase, adopted as the main theme of the Fourth Plenum of the Communist Party of China's (CPC) Nineteenth Central Committee held in 2019, 1 is now helping to direct and shape new developments in big data and smart surveillance in accordance with socialist ideology, reaching into every part of people's everyday lives. Aspects of comprehensive smart surveillance are now being written into national development goals and law, thus creating a full package of surveillance, social and economic development, ideology, and governance.
Over the last two decades, the emerging Chinese Party-state has used commercial ties with North American and European providers of surveillance technologies to grow national prowess of public security, fostering a transnational state-corporate symbiosis. The exports of surveillance technologies from the Global North to China started in the late 1970s, and now Chinese technology companies are competing with and replacing those suppliers in the globalized neoliberal market. This research explores the two-way dynamic of China’s state and private surveillance capacity underscored by international companies’ profit-seeking behaviors and domestic technological and economic growth. Four case studies of companies from Canada, China, and the US are used to highlight the changing dynamics in the global circulation of surveillance technologies. Particular attention is paid to the cyclical nature of such technologies through which unresolved issues of global governance continue to emerge and, accordingly, support the growth of technology-powered authoritarianism worldwide.
Surveillance infrastructure in China monitors and enables authorities to react to potential risky, miscreant or criminal behaviour. What type of behaviours are perceived to be so, is determined in large part by ideology. Therefore, surveillance infrastructure relies on the machinery of ideology to define the boundaries of its use. In this paper, we outline six key ideological concepts relating to governance in Xi Jinping’s China that have helped to expand the boundaries of surveillance. We identify terms embedded in promotional material of Hikvision and other surveillance technology firms as a springboard for conceptual discussion. The aim is to survey the ideological lexicon of concepts that position surveillance within the Party-state’s broad capacity-building ambitions for governance in Xi’s China. This positioning amplifies the political responsibility of state, social and market actors to work together to broaden surveillance activities for ‘society-building’ purposes, and ultimately for the realisation of Xi Jinping’s goal of National Rejuvenation.
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