Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2024. US$35.00, cloth. ISBN 9780674257832
How does the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) control a population of over 1.4 billion effectively? Writing of the post-Mao period since 1978, many scholars, including myself, have addressed the question through the lens of perceived performance legitimacy. It is argued that there is a de facto social contract between the Chinese population and the CCP. Quite simply, the people agree to accept the CCP’s control in exchange for the CCP improving their living standard. But what exactly is the nature of the CCP’s control? In The Sentinel State, Minxin Pei unravels the CCP’s vast surveillance apparatus in extraordinary detail. Over the past few decades, China scholars have produced many theories, concepts, and empirical knowledge about the CCP’s performance legitimacy, yet have not made any progress in studying the CCP’s coercion systematically. The Sentinel State makes for a major contribution to the underdeveloped literature on this consequential subject. Pei shows that since Mao’s era to the present, the reliance on coercion has been the most enduring feature of CCP rule, regardless of the level of performance legitimacy it enjoys.
The Sentinel State characterizes the CCP’s surveillance apparatus as a system of “distributed surveillance” based on “Leninism.” It is a distributed system in the sense that the responsibilities and costs of surveillance are shared in a “multi-layered structure.” At the core are three state security agencies: the Ministry of State Security, Ministry of Public Security, and police stations (chapter 3). To prevent the concentration of power these three entities are not organized hierarchically but have their own separate areas of jurisdiction. Beyond these core agencies are organizations directly controlled by the party-state, such as neighbourhood committees, state-owned enterprises, government bureaucracies, state-affiliated social organizations (e.g., official labour unions and religious groups), and universities (chapter 4), all of which maintain routine surveillance operations. This includes the recruitment and management of a vast network of ordinary Chinese as informants to spy on each other. It is estimated that a total of 1 percent of the population in China are under routine surveillance (246). Pei stresses that the effectiveness of the CCP’s surveillance system rests on its labour-intensive features much more than any of its high-tech features. AI-enabled surveillance cameras in public places, mobile phone tracking, the social credit system, and other technologies are said to play a supplementary role for surveillance, while labour-intensive spying firmly remains primary.
Pei traces the foundations of the CCP’s distributed surveillance system to the Mao era, during which programmes for population control inherited from imperial China (e.g., baojia) and the Soviet Union (e.g., household registration system) were adapted (chapter 1). Pei assigns singular importance to the CCP’s Leninist structure, which is also a Soviet legacy, in empowering distributed surveillance. Vertically, the CCP’s political-legal committees vet key personnel of state security agencies and coordinate between them (chapter 2). Horizontally, the penetration of CCP organizations (party committees and cells) inside mass organizations such as neighbourhood committees enables them to take up security functions at the Party’s behest, alongside discharging their main functions. The overriding importance of the CCP’s Leninist structure to surveillance is well-proven. It is also intriguing because in the first five to seven years of Xi Jinping’s rule, he repeatedly criticized the CCP’s weakness as a Leninist instrument. Yet, The Sentinel State demonstrates that the CCP was an effective Leninist instrument for surveillance purposes two decades before Xi. This was despite during the same period the CCP’s Leninist organization and ethos for internal discipline and ideological indoctrination decayed. The contrast suggests that in lieu of strongman rule, the CCP’s Leninist control was directed externally much more so than internally. Effective external control apparently had little to no bearing on internal discipline.
The purpose of distributed surveillance is said to be “preventive repression” (as opposed to reactive repression such as arrests, beatings, and imprisonments), which aims to “stymie opposition before it can act” (6). Successful preventive repression enables the CCP to reduce its reliance on reactive repression, hence reducing the risks of triggering destabilizing backlashes. There is no doubt that the CCP’s surveillance apparatus has been highly effective in preventive repression in overall terms. Yet, as is acknowledged by Pei, the large-scale zero-Covid and white paper protests in 2022 revealed its limitations.
This was unexpected because right before these protests the CCP expanded its “grid management” system to ensure that all residences in China are directly targeted for routine surveillance. The eruption of these protests might have signalled the immaturity of the grid management system; but there was a deeper problem. According to Pei, “the very effectiveness of the Party’s surveillance state may lead to neglect of greater threats to its hold on power” (247). In the case of the 2022 protests, these greater threats were widespread resentment and frustration with the lockdown. This revealed that in times of crises when the CCP suffers from a significant deficit in performance legitimacy, it may not be able to count on surveillance for effective control.
Pei argues that non-Leninist dictatorships cannot acquire surveillance capabilities due to the lack of comparable organizational infrastructure and capacity for coordination and mobilization (242). Since the CCP’s Leninist structure is nowhere as systematic or penetrative outside China compared to that inside China, this observation sheds importing lights on the nature of the CCP’s surveillance abroad. This insight should be accounted for in the emerging literature on transnational repression.
The Sentinel State successfully triangulates data collected from diverse official Chinese sources to research a topic known for its high entry barriers. It is an eye-opener for anyone interested in authoritarian surveillance and the politics and governance of China.
Olivia Cheung
King’s College London, London