For decades, China watchers argued that economic liberalization and increasing prosperity would bring democracy to the world’s most populous country. Instead, the Communist Party’s grip on power has only strengthened. Why? In his latest book, The Sentinel State, Minxin Pei details the effectiveness of the Chinese surveillance state. And the source of that effectiveness is not just advanced technology like facial recognition AI and mobile phone tracking, but China’s vast, labor-intensive infrastructure of domestic spying.
Minxin Pei is the author of several books on Chinese domestic politics, including China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay and China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy. He is the Tom & Margot Pritzker ’72 Professor of Government and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College.
