Summary of Josh Chin & Liza Lin's Surveillance State

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 The People’s Government in Urumqi, China, has a Population Data Collection Form that requires people to report information about their religious faith and travel habits. It also has a list of countries that are problematic for the regime.

#2 In China, the Party was preoccupied with the separatist threat. In Urumqi, the police would ask people about their religious faith and travel habits. Tahir’s eyes drifted to the right-hand margin, where he saw a series of checkboxes reserved for the police to fill out: Uyghur, unemployed, passport holder, prays daily, etc.

#3 Xinjiang is a far-western region of China that shares borders with eight countries. It has been a part of China since ancient times, but no state based in China has controlled the territory for a thousand years. The Communist Party under Mao went there to promote economic development and dilute the influence of minority populations.

#4 China’s government has a list of countries that are problematic for them, and one of these is Uyghurstan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Sep 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9798350031157

IRB Media

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Insights on Josh Chin and Liza Lin's Surveillance State

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

In 2017, a friend of Tahir’s visited his advertising agency in Urumqi and noticed a stack of white forms on the desk. The forms were a Tetris-like puzzle covering one side of a single page, with paired boxes containing questions and answers.

#2

The Party was preoccupied with the separatist threat. Tahir’s eyes continued down the page. The next field was less familiar. It asked for an integrated comparison result. Tahir guessed it might have something to do with that.

#3

Xinjiang is the largest province in China, and shares borders with eight countries. It has been a part of China since ancient times, but no state based in China has controlled the territory for a thousand years.

#4

Under Party rule, the Uyghurs’ experiences mirrored the struggles of people living under occupation elsewhere in the world. In 2014, Xinjiang’s Party chief introduced internal passports that restricted the movements of Uyghurs around the region.

#5

The Party’s campaign to eradicate Uyghur resistance in the early 2000s was marked by a long delay before Tahir was asked to fill out the data collection form. He had been a successful TV producer and commercial filmmaker, but he derived more renown in Xinjiang for his poetry.

#6

Tahir grew up in Xinjiang during a period of relative calm. He was a leader in the 1989 Beijing student protests, and after the crackdown, he fled to Kashgar in western Xinjiang. He was soon ordered back to Beijing, where he was forced to write a confession that ran to 240 pages.

#7

After the protests, Tahir was groomed for leadership. He was named chair of the students’ association for his university department and deputy secretary of the department’s Communist Youth League branch. He began to read Chinese translations of American writers like Allen Ginsberg and Sylvia Plath, and threw himself into writing poetry.

#8

In 1998, Tahir was released from the labor camp, and he began