It’s no secret that China monitors its citizens, internet activity, and battles pornography, and China is working to improve those methods to make them more effective and efficient.
But when it comes to the United States, what seems to be ignored is the fact that America is also a surveillance state. The difference is in who is behind that surveillance. In China, it is the government. In the United States it is mostly private sector corporations that are owned and controlled by the 0.1-percent wealthiest citizens, or, to be more precise, the real Deep State that goes to extremes to manipulate the other 99.9 percent of US citizens to do what the autocratic billionaires in charge want them to think and do.
In China, there is no Deep State because the Chinese Communist Party with more than 80-million Party members spread across the country in every city and province rules the country as a team with a primary goal to hold on to power and increase the quality of every citizen’s lifestyle while insuring harmony.
Understanding what that harmony means to most Chinese helps explain one of the reasons for China’s surveillance state, but what is the reason behind America’s corporate surveillance state that monitors our lives and gathers data on every citizen that will follow us from cradle to grave?
In China, the state owned media is self-censored to the point that sometimes China’s president or a member of the Politburo, decisions are made through consensus, makes a phone call and requests that Xinhua covers an issue in more depth that has been ignored. In China, there is one unified message reported to the people and it is no secret that the people know the news is censored and can be misleading.
The U.S. is the only Western Country that doesn’t have a law that allows its citizens to know what information corporations have collected on them.
However, in the United States, the media is in bedlam and disarray. President Donald Trump repeatedly calls media reports he doesn’t like or disagrees with as “Fake News” while the media he supports and watches (since Trump has said more than once that he is proud he doesn’t read books), like Fox News, is spreading misinformation and lies to support a political agenda from one political and/or religious sect.
The reason behind China’s surveillance state is different. In China, the surveillance state keeps watch so it is almost impossible for an individual or group to sabotage the Party’s plans to continue to modernize China and improve the lifestyles of its citizens — even if the Chinese do not have the freedom to speak out on political issues and attempt to shake up the establishment.
In the United States people are products when it comes to information gathered without their knowledge and permission.
In the United States the media is in chaos, and that chaos is spreading throughout the country.
But China has already lived through more than a century of chaos until Deng Xiaoping ended the last element of that suffering, the insanity of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. I think it is safe to say that the majority of Chinese citizens will support a surveillance state that focuses on promoting peace and harmony instead of insanity and chaos.
This blog post wouldn’t be balanced without mentioning that Actually, Most Countries Are Increasingly Spying on Their Citizens, the UN Says. “Today’s news shows that massive surveillance can no longer be said to be the realm of authoritarian regimes, and is part of an alarming trend worldwide,” reported Privacy International, a group that supports limits on surveillance.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of My Splendid Concubine, Crazy is Normal, Running with the Enemy, and The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova.
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