The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict between the US and Xi Jinping's China

by Kevin Rudd

core precept of Confucianism is “know thy place,” the CCP intends to also know everyone’s place at all times. A vast network of CCTV cameras with AI-enabled facial, iris, voice, and gait recognition capabilities; geospatial monitoring of individual movements through cell phone positioning data; a nearly universal cashless payment system for monitoring all financial transaction (including, as is planned for the future, through a fully government-controlled digital currency); and, most recently, a carefully crafted “social credit system” that permanently monitors and rewards or punishes people’s political trustworthiness based on everything they say or do in China’s omnipresent digital world. Technology like this is creating a surveillance and police state of unprecedented power. Digital technologies not only allow the state to keep track of nearly everything its common citizens do but also enable party leadership to closely monitor the political compliance of local party cadres right across the country.

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