Smart Governance, Smarter Surveillance

Abstract

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.

Surveillance infrastructure in China: Key concepts and mechanisms enhancing the Party-state’s governance ambitions

“…To realise this vision, the Party-state has seen the need to expand the ideological boundaries of surveilling society; the need is to regulate social relations by monitoring and responding to irregularities of behaviour to produce harmony and stability. Local government and 'social forces' (community groups) work together to deliver public services to citizens while also monitoring them (Bernot & Trevaskes, 2022). Market-provided digital tools play their role by both improving 'social welfare and service options for citizens while expanding the capacity of the Party-state to "lead over everything" by making society more legible to itself and thus easier control' (Bernot & Trevaskes, 2022, p. 28).…”

“…Accommodated under this Xi-era system are comprehensive management of public order centres (社会治安综合治理中心, or comprehensive management centre or 综治中心 for short). Municipal comprehensive management centres run by public security bureaus are collection points for any intelligence information and are also a one-stop shop for other public service provision such as mediation (Bernot & Trevaskes, 2022;Chen & Greitens, 2022;Xu & He, 2022). These centres integrate data gathered from various intelligence sources, linking separate systems of surveillance together.…”

“…Nowadays, mass surveillance occupies an important role in operationalising this task. Under Xi Jinping, rationales built around making society more transparent to itself (Bernot & Trevaskes, 2022) are framed through a storyline comprising key organising concepts, beginning with the idea of modernising governance capacity as the top organising principle. Capacity-building includes improving the ability for political-legal actors not merely to contain disorder but also for societybuilding (社会建设); that is, to construct a particular type of society characterised by harmonious social relations and devoid of instability (Li, 2016;Liu, 2019;Zhang, 2020).…”