REVIEW: China: The Land that Failed to Fail

On a sweltering August day at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, former China editor for BBC News Carrie Gracie chaired a discussion between Yuan Yang, tech correspondent for the Financial Times, Kai Strittmatter, author of We Have Been Harmonised: Life in China’s Surveillance State, and Steven Erlanger, reporter for The New York Times. The title of the debate, ‘China: The Land that Failed to Fail’, contained within it a Western presumption about China: That it should, according to all logic, have failed by now, except it hasn’t. Instead, it continues to grow and expand.

Yuan Yang commented that many Westerners assume that only the Western model of democratic capitalism can succeed, but China has managed to forge its own successful path contrary to this model. Steven Erlanger argued that surveillance has been integral to the survival of the Chinese system, and although this system may not last forever, China itself is in his opinion too big to fail. Kai Strittmatter, meanwhile, remarked upon the extraordinary, chameleon-like ability of the Chinese Communist Party to reinvent itself and adapt to new circumstances, in contrast to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The new China, according to Strittmatter, is not like the old China.

Strittmatter rather dominated the debate, which is perhaps unsurprising, as he holds strong feelings about the impact of Xi Jinping on China. The Chinese President, in Strittmatter’s opinion, wants to return to the 1950s, insofar as he is restricting civil liberties, but he is also moving China into the twenty-first century through the embrace of modern technology. A combination of artificial intelligence and big data has resulted in a new kind of dictatorship: Digital totalitarianism, which seeks to internalise control and turn people into their own obedient prison guards.

However, Yuan Yang, who was born in China, questioned the extent to which the Chinese surveillance state can be characterised as all pervasive. After all, the censors cannot read minds. As a result, it can be hard to distinguish between supposedly dangerous and non-dangerous thoughts and activities.

Steven Erlanger also expressed doubt about the long-term sustainability of the Chinese national narrative of returning China to its former greatness. Erlanger characterised this as “the China Dream”. He also mentioned the Chinese government’s infamous Social Credit System, which monitors citizens and restricts their freedoms. Strittmatter likened this to a mixture of Orwell and Huxley, in terms of its dystopian credentials. A collective amnesia is enforced, so that many Chinese citizens aren’t aware of the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989.

Yuan Yang pointed out that, despite the Chinese state’s attempt to censor all news about the recent Hong Kong protests, information leaked through, so the Chinese state media now covers these protests, but from a pro-government perspective. Chinese citizens outside Hong Kong readily swallow such propaganda, as there is no alternate narrative to turn to. Strittmatter warned that China, through initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative, is seeking to increase influence and export its model of government control. Even if the Chinese Communist Party one day collapses, this won’t necessarily spell the beginning of Chinese democracy, Strittmatter predicted.