Notes

5 W Main: The Sentinel State. Chinese society has undergone radical, at times tumultuous, change since Mao Zedong established the communist People’s Republic in 1949. But since Mao, social and economic revolutions haven’t meant political revolution in China—and today, the Communist Party’s hold on power is, apparently, firmer than ever. Why’s that?

Minxin Pei’s recent book, The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China, makes the case that the fundamental reason is China’s near-total ability to spy constantly on its citizens. Pei, a professor of governance at Claremont McKenna College, has mapped it out: While high-tech facial recognition cameras are important to the Chinese surveillance system, what's even more important is the relatively small group of secret-police officers who command millions of informants.

If it feels like we’ve seen this before, the East German Stasi also had informers in every room—and the East German Stasi is long gone, along with the East German regime. But dwelling on the connection may be too optimistic.

—Gustav Jönsson