Tag: Pei, Minxin

Book Review: ‘Means of Control,’ by Byron Tau; ‘The Sentinel State,’ by Minxin Pei

Media Library

MEANS OF CONTROL: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government Is Creating a New American Surveillance State, by Byron Tau THE SENTINEL STATE: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China, by Minxin Pei In 1975, the French philosopher Michel Foucault published “Surveiller et Punir” — “To Surveil and Punish” — a book popularly translated into English as “Discipline and Punish,” about how societies keep their populations in line with minimal violence. At the center of his argument lay the panopticon, a prison designed by the 18th-century political reformer…

China Moves to Erase the Vestiges of ‘Zero Covid’ to Deter Dissent

Chin@Strategy

This is how China’s ruling Communist Party wants people to remember how it handled the Covid-19 pandemic: It was a “miracle in human history.” Every measure the government imposed was rooted in science, supported by the masses — and, ultimately, “completely correct.” The party is waging an ambitious propaganda campaign to rewrite the public’s memory of “zero Covid,” a signature policy of China’s leader, Xi Jinping, that helped contain the virus for almost three years — but went to such extreme lengths that it smothered the economy and set off…