‘Because There Were Cameras, I Didn’t Ask Any Questions’

Chinese Government Documents Provide New Details on a Small Xinjiang Town’s Extensive System of Surveillance

By Darren Byler on December 30, 2020

Sometime in the summer of 2019, Vera Zhou, a young college student from the University of Washington, forgot to pretend that she was from the non-Muslim majority group in China, the Han. At a checkpoint at the mall, she put her ID on the scanner and looked into the camera. Immediately, an alarm sounded and the guards manning the equipment pulled her aside. That was when she remembered that when she ventured outside the jurisdiction of her police precinct she should pretend that she had forgotten her ID and hold her head up high, playing the part of a wealthy, urban Han college student who couldn’t be bothered by mall security and face scans.

Xinjiang Shawan County Smart (Safe) Project Feasibility Study

on December 30, 2020

In 2017, the Shawan county Public Security Bureau issued a procurement notice for surveillance equipment and software. Included with the notice was this supplemental material, which contains in-depth descriptions of the types of technologies officials hoped to buy, as well as the rationale for buying them. This document is in its original Chinese.

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Chinese Government Procurement Network

Methodology

on December 21, 2020

A portion of the research for “Pretty Lady Cadres” draws on a dataset that ChinaFile constructed, consisting of biographical information about the top Party and state leaders at the provincial, municipal, and county levels of China’s government. Each administrative level has both a Chinese Communist Party Secretary and a head of government (a governor, a mayor, or their equivalent, depending on the level and the specific province or region). In the administrative hierarchy, there are multiple municipalities under each province, and multiple counties under each municipality.

Pretty Lady Cadres

New Data Shows Limits on Women’s Advancement in China’s Leadership

By Shen Lu on December 21, 2020

In early February, at the beginning of the outbreak of the deadly COVID-19 virus in China, Wang Fang, a local Communist Party secretary, was working around the clock. As an official responsible for 19,000 residents of a neighborhood in the city of Deyang in Sichuan province, Wang spent her days answering questions from concerned citizens via WeChat and figuring out who needed to quarantine.

Message Control

A New For-Profit Industry Helps China’s Leaders ‘Manage Public Opinion’

By Jessica Batke & Mareike Ohlberg on December 20, 2020

Li Wenliang’s death had only been announced a few hours earlier, but Warming High-Tech was already on the case. The company had been monitoring online mentions of the COVID-whistleblower’s name in the several days since police had detained and punished him for “spreading rumors.” Now, news of his deteriorating condition, and eventual passing, had triggered a deluge of sorrow and outrage online adorned with candle emojis, photos of farewell wishes scrawled into the snow, and a final image of the 34-year-old ophthalmologist as he lay in his hospital bed in Wuhan.

Methodology

on December 20, 2020

ChinaFile’s research for “Message Control: How a New For-Profit Industry Helps China’s Leaders ‘Manage Public Opinion’” relied primarily on a dataset comprising some 3,100 procurement notices that central and local government offices posted for goods and services related to public opinion monitoring. This article explains how we arrived at that dataset—how we selected notices for inclusion, as well as how we processed and sifted through them in order to draw analytical conclusions.

Key Takeaways

on December 20, 2020

“Message Control: How a New For-Profit Industry Helps China’s Leaders ‘Manage Public Opinion’,” a new report from ChinaFile, relies on an analysis of some 3,100 publicly available Chinese government procurement notices related to purchases of products and services to help officials monitor and control public opinion across China between January 2007 and late August 2020.

Beijing High People’s Court Public Opinion Monitoring Data Processing Program

on December 20, 2020

In 2019, the Beijing High People’s Court issued a procurement notice for public opinion monitoring services and data processing. Included with the notice was this supplemental material, which contains in-depth descriptions of the types of technologies officials hoped to buy. This document is in its original Chinese.

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Keywords: 
Public Opinion Management Article
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Chinese Government Procurement Network