Slashdot Mirror
12 Days In Xinjiang - China's Surveillance State (business-standard.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader b0s0z0ku writes: China has turned Xinjiang, the Northwestern part of the country surrounding Urumqi, into one of the most advanced surveillance states in the world. Officially, the purpose is to prevent terrorism and control resistance to the government in one of the few parts of China where ethnic Chinese are a minority.
From routine use of facial recognition cameras, to police checkpoints where people's cell phones randomly are checked for unauthorized software, to needing to swipe an ID card and be photographed to buy gasoline and other necessities, the level of technology — and control — is frightening and awe-inspiring.
From routine use of facial recognition cameras, to police checkpoints where people's cell phones randomly are checked for unauthorized software, to needing to swipe an ID card and be photographed to buy gasoline and other necessities, the level of technology — and control — is frightening and awe-inspiring.
In Myanmar, you're not allowed to travel from one province to another without written permission and a reason, even within just Myanmar free travel is restricted. The army is quite small, the people quite large in number, by dividing them geographically, it lets the military keep hold/track of a large populace with a small force.
The divide and conquer strategy, divide people with divisive policies, set them fighting against each other at every opportunity, then take advantage of the division. Here it's geographic, checkpoints, communications controls etc. In Myanmar its also geographic but low-tech, in USA it's tweets of fake propaganda designed to set Americans against each other / (even Republicans against each other, there's no division too small to attempt it seems).
In Russia, it's fake politicians representing jailed opposition leaders, the fake ones are there to divide the opposition vote so Putin's victory doesn't look so fraudulent. A few of the fakes will then endorse Putin so nobody is really sure who to vote and Putin never has to try to hide an opposition sweeping victory from the majority of Russians.
This isn't about multiculturalism in general, many of us are perfectly happy trusting and working with people from other cultures. Blaming this on multiculturalism when what one is really talking about is dominant groups reacting to multiculturalism is akin to a domestic abuser who after punching their spouses says "see what you make me do."
(posting as AC because what I'm going to say is going to hurt some feelings...)
I live in a part of Asia and we get regular news about this. The Uighur are straight up terrorists - they're basically the Palestinians of the far east. Their leader is completely dedicated to keep her tribe as violent as possible until China just lets them have autonomy on the territory, at which point they would basically live as uncivilized dirt farmers. The fact that they're still around and haven't just been erased shows the Chinese government is a little different now than it was 20~30 years ago.