Search
Log in
  • Home

  • Categories

  • Audiobooks

  • E-books

  • For kids

  • Top lists

  • Help

  • Download app

  • Use campaign code

  • Redeem gift card

  • Try free now
  • Log in
  • Language

    🇳🇴 Norge

    • NO
    • EN

    🇧🇪 Belgique

    • FR
    • EN

    🇩🇰 Danmark

    • DK
    • EN

    🇩🇪 Deutschland

    • DE
    • EN

    🇪🇸 España

    • ES
    • EN

    🇫🇷 France

    • FR
    • EN

    🇳🇱 Nederland

    • NL
    • EN

    🇦🇹 Österreich

    • AT
    • EN

    🇨🇭 Schweiz

    • DE
    • EN

    🇫🇮 Suomi

    • FI
    • EN

    🇸🇪 Sverige

    • SE
    • EN
  1. Books
  2. Society and Social Sciences
  3. Society

Read and listen for free for 42 days!

Cancel anytime

Try free now
4.5(6)

We Have Been Harmonized : Life in China's Surveillance State

Named a Notable Work of Nonfiction of 2020 by the Washington Post

As heard on NPR's Fresh Air, We Have Been Harmonized, by award-winning correspondent Kai Strittmatter, offers a groundbreaking look, based on decades of research, at how China created the most terrifying surveillance state in history.

China’s new drive for repression is being underpinned by unprecedented advances in technology: facial and voice recognition, GPS tracking, supercomputer databases, intercepted cell phone conversations, the monitoring of app use, and millions of high-resolution security cameras make it nearly impossible for a Chinese citizen to hide anything from authorities. Commercial transactions, including food deliveries and online purchases, are fed into vast databases, along with everything from biometric information to social media activities to methods of birth control. Cameras (so advanced that they can locate a single person within a stadium crowd of 60,000) scan for faces and walking patterns to track each individual’s movement. In some schools, children’s facial expressions are monitored to make sure they are paying attention at the right times. In a new Social Credit System, each citizen is given a score for good behavior; for those who rate poorly, punishments include being banned from flying or taking high-speed trains, exclusion from certain jobs, and preventing their children from attending better schools. And it gets worse: advanced surveillance has led to the imprisonment of more than a million Chinese citizens in western China alone, many held in draconian “reeducation” camps.

This digital totalitarianism has been made possible not only with the help of Chinese private tech companies, but the complicity of Western governments and corporations eager to gain access to China’s huge market. And while governments debate trade wars and tariffs, the Chinese Communist Party and its local partners are aggressively stepping up their efforts to export their surveillance technology abroad—including to the United States.

We Have Been Harmonized is a terrifying portrait of life under unprecedented government surveillance—and a dire warning about what could happen anywhere under the pretense of national security.

“Terrifying. … A warning call."" —The Sunday Times (UK), a “Best Book of the Year so Far”

Audiobook

  • Published: 9/1/2020

  • Language: English

  • Publisher: HarperAudio

  • ISBN: 9780063027329


Author:

  • Kai Strittmatter

Narrator:

  • Matthew Waterson

Format:

  • Audiobook

Duration:

  • 10 h 30 min

Language:

English

Categories:

  • Society and Social Sciences
  • Society
  • Society and Social Sciences
  • Politics
  • Warfare
  • Social science

More by Kai Strittmatter

Skip the list
  1. Die Neuerfindung der Diktatur : Wie China den digitalen Überwachungsstaat aufbaut und uns damit herausfordert

    Kai Strittmatter

    audiobook
  2. We have been harmonised: Life in China's surveillance state

    Kai Strittmatter

    book

Others have also read

Skip the list
  1. The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden

    Peter L. Bergen

    audiobookbook
  2. China and the World

    David Shambaugh

    audiobook
  3. Seks skudd ved stengetid og andre mord : skjebner fra "Rett nummer 1" Old Bailey

    Richard Herrmann

    audiobook
  4. Vi styrter! : øksedrama på Kato Air flight 605 : en dokumentarisk thriller

    Yngve Jacobsen

    audiobook
  5. Knut Hamsun : reisen til Hitler

    Tore Rem

    audiobook
  6. Politiske skandaler : sex, korrupsjon og maktkamp

    Kim Arne Hammerstad

    audiobook
  7. Edderkoppen : historien om en møbelhandler

    Viggo Johansen, Pål T. Jørgensen

    audiobook
  8. Putin

    Hans-Wilhelm Steinfeld

    audiobook
  9. Mamma er trygda

    Mímir Kristjánsson

    audiobook
  10. Lena fra Tysfjord : en historie om rasisme, svik og forsoning

    Anne-Britt Harsem

    audiobook
  11. Kuppet : på innsiden av Norges mektigste mafiafamilie

    Rolf J. Widerøe, Hans Petter Aass

    audiobook
  12. Det mørkeste rommet

    Hilde Reikrås, Ingunn Røren

    audiobook

  • 3 books

    Kai Strittmatter

    Kai Strittmatter was for more than a decade the China correspondent for Germany’s national newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung. Fluent in Mandarin, he has studied China for more than 30 years, including extensive stints in Xi’an and Taipei. He is now a member of the advisory board at the Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin. Kai lives in Copenhagen where he works as a correspondent for the Scandinavian countries.

    Read more

Help and contact


About us

  • Our story
  • Career
  • Press
  • Accessibility
  • Partner with us
  • Investor relations
  • Instagram
  • Facebook

Explore

  • Categories
  • Audiobooks
  • E-books
  • Magazines
  • For kids
  • Top lists

Popular categories

  • Crime
  • Biographies and reportage
  • Fiction
  • Feel-good and romance
  • Personal development
  • Children's books
  • True stories
  • Sleep and relaxation

Nextory

Copyright © 2025 Nextory AB

Privacy Policy · Terms ·
Excellent4.3 out of 5