So far, the Olympics have been an open invitation to China-bash, a bottomless excuse for Western journalists to go after the Commies on everything from internet censorship to Darfur. Through all the nasty news stories, however, the Chinese government has seemed amazingly unperturbed. That's because it is betting on this: when the opening ceremonies begin friday, you will instantly forget all that unpleasantness as your brain is zapped by the cultural/athletic/political extravaganza that is the Beijing Olympics.
Like it or not, you are about to be awed by China's sheer awesomeness.
The games have been billed as China's "coming out party" to the world. They are far more significant than that. These Olympics are the coming out party for a disturbingly efficient way of organizing society, one that China has perfected over the past three decades, and is finally ready to show off. It is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarianism communism -- central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance -- harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism. Some call it "authoritarian capitalism," others "market Stalinism," personally I prefer "McCommunism."
The Beijing Olympics are themselves the perfect expression of this hybrid system. Through extraordinary feats of authoritarian governing, the Chinese state has built stunning new stadiums, highways and railways -- all in record time. It has razed whole neighborhoods, lined the streets with trees and flowers and, thanks to an "anti-spitting" campaign, cleaned the sidewalks of saliva. The Communist Party of China even tried to turn the muddy skies blue by ordering heavy industry to cease production for a month -- a sort of government-mandated general strike.
As for those Chinese citizens who might go off-message during the games -- Tibetan activists, human right campaigners, malcontent bloggers -- hundreds have been thrown in jail in recent months. Anyone still harboring protest plans will no doubt be caught on one of Beijing's 300,000 surveillance cameras and promptly nabbed by a security officer; there are reportedly 100,000 of them on Olympics duty.
The goal of all this central planning and spying is not to celebrate the glories of Communism, regardless of what China's governing party calls itself. It is to create the ultimate consumer cocoon for Visa cards, Adidas sneakers, China Mobile cell phones, McDonald's happy meals, Tsingtao beer, and UPS delivery -- to name just a few of the official Olympic sponsors. But the hottest new market of all is the surveillance itself. Unlike the police states of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, China has built a Police State 2.0, an entirely for-profit affair that is the latest frontier for the global Disaster Capitalism Complex.
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First rounds of fireworks outline the National Stadium, or Bird's Nest, during the second dress rehearsal of the Olympics opening ceremony, Beijing, China, Aug. 2, 2008. Only an exclusive audience who had sworn secrecy to the opening ceremony was allowed
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Chinese corporations financed by U.S. hedge funds, as well as some of American's most powerful corporations -- Cisco, General Electric, Honeywell, Google -- have been working hand in glove with the Chinese government to make this moment possible: networking the closed circuit cameras that peer from every other lamp pole, building the "Great Firewall" that allows for remote internet monitoring, and designing those self-censoring search engines.
By next year, the Chinese internal security market is set to be worth $33-billion. Several of the larger Chinese players in the field have recently taken their stocks public on U.S. exchanges, hoping to cash in the fact that, in volatile times, security and defense stocks are seen as the safe bets. China Information Security Technology, for instance, is now listed on the NASDAQ and China Security and Surveillance is on the NYSE. A small clique of U.S. hedge funds has been floating these ventures, investing more than $150-million in the past two years. The returns have been striking. Between October 2006 and October 2007, China Security and Surveillance's stock went up 306 percent.
Much of the Chinese government's lavish spending on cameras and other surveillance gear has taken place under the banner of "Olympic Security." But how much is really needed to secure a sporting event? The price tag has been put at a staggering $12-billion -- to put that in perspective, Salt Lake City, which hosted the Winter Olympics just five months after September 11, spent $315 million to secure the games. Athens spent around $1.5-billion in 2004. Many human rights groups have pointed out that China's security upgrade is reaching far beyond Beijing: there are now 660 designated "safe cities" across the country, municipalities that have been singled out to receive new surveillance cameras and other spy gear. And of course all the equipment purchased in the name of Olympics safety -- iris scanners, "anti-riot robots" and facial recognition software -- will stay in China after the games are long gone, free to be directed at striking workers and rural protestors.
What the Olympics have provided for Western firms is a palatable cover story for this chilling venture. Ever since the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, U.S. companies have been barred from selling police equipment and technology to China, since lawmakers feared it would be directed, once again, at peaceful demonstrators. That law has been completely disregarded in the lead up to the Olympics, when, in the name of safety for athletes and VIPs (including George W. Bush), no new toy has been denied the Chinese state.
There is a bitter irony here. When Beijing was awarded the games seven years ago, the theory was that international scrutiny would force China's government to grant more rights and freedom to its people. Instead, the Olympics have opened up a backdoor for the regime to massively upgrade its systems of population control and repression. And remember when Western companies used to claim that by doing business in China, they were actually spreading freedom and democracy? We are now seeing the reverse: investment in surveillance and censorship gear is helping Beijing to actively repress a new generation of activists before it has the chance to network into a mass movement.
The numbers on this trend are frightening. In April 2007, officials from 13 provinces held a meeting to report back on how their new security measures were performing. In the province of Jiangsu, which, according to the South China Morning Post, was using "artificial intelligence to extend and improve the existing monitoring system" the number of protests and riots "dropped by 44 per cent last year." In the province of Zhejiang, where new electronic surveillance systems had been installed, they were down 30 per cent. In Shaanxi, "mass incidents" -- code for protests -- were down by 27 per cent in a year. Dong Lei, the province's deputy party chief, gave part of the credit to a huge investment in security cameras across the province. "We aim to achieve all day and all-weather monitoring capability," he told the gathering.
Activists in China now find themselves under intense pressure, unable to function even at the limited levels they were able to a year ago. Internet cafes are filled with surveillance cameras, and surfing is carefully watched. At the offices of a labor rights group in Hong Kong, I met the well-known Chinese dissident Jun Tao. He had just fled the mainland in the face of persistent police harassment. After decades of fighting for democracy and human rights, he said the new surveillance technologies had made it "impossible to continue to function in China."
It's easy to see the dangers of a high tech surveillance state in far off China, since the consequences for people like Jun are so severe. It's harder to see the dangers when these same technologies creep into every day life closer to home-networked cameras on U.S. city streets, "fast lane" biometric cards at airports, dragnet surveillance of email and phone calls. But for the global homeland security sector, China is more than a market; it is also a showroom. In Beijing, where state power is absolute and civil liberties non-existent, American-made surveillance technologies can be taken to absolute limits.
The first test begins today: Can China, despite the enormous unrest boiling under the surface, put on a "harmonious" Olympics? If the answer is yes, like so much else that is made in China, Police State 2.0 will be ready for export.
Read more HuffPost coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games
Read my full report on how U.S. corporations are helping to build China's high tech Police State in Rolling Stone.
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism is now out in paperback. You can find extensive resources related to the book at www.shockdoctrine.org.
Follow Naomi Klein on Twitter: www.twitter.com/NaomiAKlein
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/16/china http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/aug/27/riotinto.commodities
It is impossible for any government to manipulate let alone to control this teeming mass of humanity. What all visitors see is therefore the reality that is China today.
China must be doing things right for the results you can see for yourselves. Yes, China is America's strategic rival. But the battles fought are on a far more sophisticated level than you realize. (Beijing Consensus http://fpc.org.uk/fsblob/244.pdf) Attacking China on Police State, your vaunted human rights and freedoms et al totally misses the target. Take your fears to their logical conclusion. Say China concedes on your points and changes her laws and practices. Be careful. They will not change a single iota why your country is failing catastrophically in practically every area that becomes a great country. With the looming recession, banking crisis and the fundamental dysfunctions in your economy you have far more serious concerns than China Bashing.
The US cleaned their clocks with 1 gold medal per 8.4 million people.
China needs freedom to catch US in gold medals.
Patriot Act !!!!!!!!!
More interest is shown in baseball and football games. The really free people in America are criminals who make the rest of us live in less freedom than we used to have when there were laws that were followed. Thieves, drug pushers, and corporate crime are taking many of our freedoms away by the liberal judges and the ACLU who defend them . Mild or no sentences for many crimes committed that
hurt many of us who are helpless to do anything about it. So we lock our doors...and don't go out after dark...We are vulnerable in this country because our laws are not obeyed. Just turn your head the other way and hope it doesn't get knocked off be some criminal who gets away with whatever because he knows he will get a light sentence or probation and keep whatever he stole from someone else.
So....no consequences....more crime...when laws are not followed. If you need cameras to teach people what laws are meant for, then why not use them if it deters crime...not freedoms.
Why not protect the innocent instead of people who constantly try to get away with something.
It is a hard job to pull 1.3 billion people out of destitution but the Chinese are achieving just that. They are proud of how far they have come, they are not a third world hellhole anymore.
Obviously there will remain serious problems but I think the attitude most people have is get rich first, worry about human rights and freedoms second. The latter will be for the next generation.
The olympics is an opportunity for us all to come together. China has a history of isolation from the rest of the world and this is their big jump into it. They are welcoming the world into their country and obviously cannot afford for anything to go wrong.
China has already received threats from terrorist groups (who have already attacked them in previous weeks) and are rightly keeping security tight to prevent a massive slaughter of innocent people, chinese and foreigner, from disrupting the Games.
What is the difference between this way of conducting business and the selling of Heroin or Cocaine on the toughest of New York's or Baltimore's drug infested corners? None whatsoever!! It's survival of the most ruthless and greedy.
People like W Bush and Dick Cheney are ideologues first and American citizens second, and they do insist that "Globalism" proceed unchecked. This has led to our America and Europe having become Second and Third World Nations and China emerging as the new World Power. Only the millionaires and billionaires are happy. Everyone else must get screwed.
It also seems like an individualistically oriented analysis, very western-biased.
Step by step to democracy in China:
http://blog.chinationreport.com/2008/07/27/step-by-step-to-democracy-in-china/
Excerpt:
HONG KONG - While China’s crackdown on Tibet and heavy-handed approach to dissidents in general have reinforced its international image as a ruthless, totalitarian state ahead of next month’s Summer Olympic Games, the reality on the ground is that the Middle Kingdom has never been more democratic and is, step by small step, becoming even more so.
That reality was bolstered with the recent announcement by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as reported by the official Xinhua News Agency, that it has adopted a “tenure system†that will give real power to traditionally rubber-stamp delegates to party congresses. In the past, party elites made all the decisions. The future could be quite different - but that all depends on implementation of the new system.
http://www.chinationreport.com/ for more balanced news and views about China
put into place by this administration. Why would a President
go to a communist country that not only imports a police state
or dictatorship, but dangerous toys and food, without suffering
any punitive action? Bush is learning.
We have him in office for a little over 5 months. We have
Israel pushing for military action on Iran. This is " Shock
Doctrine" in the making!
And while the US moves in that direction, the corporate elites in England have already instituted the most highly advanced surveillance system of any western country--ostensibly to prevent street crime, but the data collected on the movement of people is used for much, much more.
Orwell, 1984, and totalitarianism are alive and well--and one needn't go to China to experience it.
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On the wall outside his former residence - flat 27B - where Orwell lived until his death in 1950, an historical plaque commemorates the anti-authoritarian author. Within 200 yards of the flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras, scanning every move.
Orwell's view of the tree-filled gardens outside the flat is under 24-hour surveillance from two cameras perched on traffic lights.
The flat's rear windows are constantly viewed from two more security cameras outside the Canonbury Place conference center.
In a lane close to Orwell's favourite pub, the Compton Arms, a camera at the rear of a car dealership records every person entering or leaving the pub.
Within a 200-yard radius of his flat are another 28 CCTV cameras, together with hundreds of private, remote-controlled security cameras used to scrutinize visitors to homes, shops and offices.
The message is reminiscent of a 1949 poster to mark the launch of Orwell's 1984: 'Big Brother is Watching You'.
They have one of the terminals there for the international data gathering computer, The Echelon. It is divided between the US, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. This automated global interception and relay system is responsible for intercepting satellite-based communications, among others.
http://home.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/echelon.html
Also, this recently came my way regarding drone spy planes in England, again, ostensibly, to fight crime in "real time."
http://www.spyreview.co.uk/2008/05/01/military-spy-planes-to-be-used-in-england-to-fight-crime/
We are all much further down the road to a total surveillance society than even I had imagined. And no one seems to care.
Naomi???
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/503224.stm