1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows: A Memoir

by Weiwei Ai

Civil society poses a challenge to autocracy, and therefore, in the eyes of our rulers, it is an object of fear. The Chinese government, accordingly, seeks to erase individual space, suppress free expression, and distort our memory. Already, in September 2003, China had launched the Golden Shield Project, a Ministry of Public Security information-gathering program with tools for internet monitoring that included speech recognition, automatic listening, remote monitoring, and facial recognition technology. As time went on, the program’s internet monitoring expanded to include tracking, interrupting, resetting, and censoring of individuals’ internet activity, as well as the tapping of telephone calls, Bluetooth transmissions, and wireless internet communications. Filter software was also introduced, directly intruding into users’ desktops and files, and software companies were required to make available records of social media communications and scanned documents.