We Have Been Harmonized

Starred review from July 6, 2020
In this fine-grained and alarming portrait of modern-day China, German journalist Strittmatter details how President Xi Jinping’s “thirst for power” and the tools of big data and artificial intelligence are paving the way for “the return of totalitarianism under digital garb.” After decades of economic and social reforms, the Chinese Communist Party was “stricken by a mood of crisis,” Strittmatter writes, until Xi was inaugurated as its leader in 2012 and began a campaign to reassert Party control over “every last corner of society.” Nowadays, sperm bank donors are required to have “excellent ideological qualities,” and the government’s “social credit system” aims to record “every action and transaction by each Chinese citizen in real time and to respond... with rewards and penalties.” Strittmatter documents the use of surveillance technologies to oppress Muslim Uighurs, explores how desire for access to the Chinese market “warps” Western businesses and politicians; notes the disappearance of three citizen journalists during the coronavirus crisis in Wuhan, and examines how Xi Jinping’s “New Silk Road” trade initiatives lay the groundwork for “a new world order determined by China.” Drawing on a wealth of experience in China, Strittmatter stuffs the book with telling details and incisive analysis. Even veteran China watchers will be impressed and enlightened. Agent: Markus Hoffmann, Regal Hoffmann & Associates.

Starred review from October 1, 2020

After decades of reform, and despite Western expectations, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has strengthened its authoritarian control of the country under the leadership of President Xi Jinping. Kai Strittmatter, foreign correspondent for S�ddeutsche Zeitung and author of China A-Z, who has lived in and studied China for many years, explains how this happened. Xi Jinping has brought back ideological campaigns not seen since the days of Mao, has ruthlessly purged potential rivals within the party, and squelched the nascent non-party controlled civil society that had begun to take root in the years prior to his ascent to power. He has done this with a combination of propaganda techniques, fear, bribery, and by harnessing the power of the internet and AI technologies to better control the population. Strittmatter explains how the CPC has plans to expand these operations globally to offer to the world a new type of authoritarianism to compete with the liberal-democratic model promoted by the West. The book concludes with a chapter on what the US and EU can do to deal with the threat this poses. VERDICT Essential for all China watchers. This absorbing read will appeal to experts and novices alike.--Joshua Wallace, Tarleton State Univ. Lib. Stephenville, TX

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 1, 2020
A chilling warning that China's authoritarian rule is only growing more insidious. In this highly relevant, frequently revelatory book, originally published in Germany in 2018, journalist Strittmatter, who has studied China for 30 years and was stationed in Beijing for a decade, argues that the opened-up China of Deng Xiaoping is an illusion. The state has used its new prosperity to essentially bribe the enlarged middle class to abide by increasingly autocratic measures, and the Chinese Communist Party has placed its leader, Xi Jinping, in a "godlike" position. "Both the Chinese people and the world at large have good reason to be nervous," writes the author. Reintroducing an ideological mix of Mao, Marx, and Confucius, Xi is a brilliant technocrat who has engineered an authoritarian state. The election of Donald Trump, notes Strittmatter, has been a gift to China: confirmation of the West's demise. While the West believed that China would gradually adopt democratic tendencies, that has not happened under Xi, who has strengthened the CCP and its ability to control the behavior and thought of the Chinese people: "He took on a diverse, lively, sometimes insubordinate society and did everything in his power to 'harmonize' it, as they say in China, stifling the voices of those who think differently and subordinating every last corner of society to the command of the Party." In a systematic, well-written narrative, the author precisely examines the means by which China has achieved this "perfect storm...for democracies everywhere." These include widespread censorship; the violent crackdown in Hong Kong; the continued persecution of the Muslim Uighurs minority, who have been subjected to a network of "re-education camps" not seen since the Nazi era; the misuse of technology to spread disinformation; the rewards system of "social trustworthiness" to keep citizens in line; and the use of terror and forced confessions. Strittmatter's accessible yet hard-hitting narrative will find an audience with policymakers and general readers alike. A frightening, vital wake-up call: The West ignores the rise of an Orwellian China at its peril.

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