We need to update Marx’s famous aphorism that “history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce”. Version 2.0 reads: history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as an app. Readers with long memories will remember Mao Zedong, the chairman (for life) of the Chinese Communist party who, in 1966, launched his Cultural Revolution to preserve Chinese communism by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society and reimposing his ideas (aka Maoism) as the dominant ideology within the party. One propaganda aid devised for this purpose was a little red book, printed in the hundreds of millions, entitled Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-tung.
The “revolution” unleashed chaos in China: millions of citizens were persecuted, suffering outrageous abuses including public humiliation, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, hard labour, sustained harassment, seizure of property and worse. A significant proportion of the population was forcibly displaced, especially young urban dwellers who were dispatched to the countryside to do manual labour and be “re-educated”.
After Mao’s death in 1976, the party eventually admitted (in 1981) that the Cultural Revolution had been “responsible for the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the party, the state, and the people since the founding of the People’s Republic” and much of the next two decades was spent trying to learn the lessons of the catastrophe, one of which was to impose a fixed term on the supreme leadership of the party.
Now spool forward and consider what is currently going on in China. Mao’s latest successor, Xi Jinping, is both general secretary of the party and president of the People’s Republic. Last year, the Chinese constitution was amended to abolish the two-term limit on tenure of these offices, in effect making Xi president for life. This impressive level of job security is, however, apparently not enough for him. He also aspires, like Mao, to immerse citizens in his political philosophy, now officially known as “Xi Jinping thought”.
But whereas Mao was an analogue autocrat, Xi is a thoroughly networked authoritarian. Not for him the technology of Gutenberg: instead of a little red book, he has a little red app, available as a free download from the internet. The party, he announced on 25 January, “must utilise the fruits of the information revolution to promote deep development of convergence media”. The objective is to “build up mainstream public opinion” and to “consolidate the shared ideological foundation underpinning the concerted efforts of the entire party and all the Chinese people”.
The app (“Xi Study Strong Nation” is the English translation of its name) has reportedly become the most popular smartphone app in China. In essence, it’s a study platform created by the party’s central committee for use by party members and cadres and covering all members and office workers across the country. The chief content consists of “Xi Jinping thought of socialism with Chinese characteristics for the new era and the spirit of the 19th national congress of the CCP” (brevity is evidently not the soul of Chinese communist wit) and amalgamates lots of reading materials from periodicals, ancient works and open courses, to songs, dramas, films, books and other stuff.
So far, so conventional. The really interesting bit is the way the app is designed to monitor how it is used: users earn points through active engagement with the material; more time on the platform earns more points. According to one report: “Reading one article earns you 0.1 points. Watching a single video earns you 0.1 points. And a full 30 minutes of either reading articles or viewing video content earns you a full 1.0 points.” You’d think Xi Study Strong Nation had been designed by social-media programmers whose mandate was always to increase “user engagement”.
It’s no good just opening the app and then going for a smoke, either: the software monitors whether you’ve viewed just the first paragraph or if you’ve given up on watching the video. And you get double points for logging on at certain times – 8:30pm-10pm Monday to Friday, for example – which means that super-keen party apparatchiks can get ahead after work by continuing to immerse themselves in the thoughts of President Xi before bedtime.
In a way, we ought not to be surprised by this latest innovation in networked authoritarianism, for the most impressive thing about the Chinese regime is how comprehensively it has refuted western assumptions about the emancipatory potential of digital technology. In 2000, when President Bill Clinton was hailing the arrival of a new era in which the world wide web would mean the triumph of liberty around the globe, he wished China “good luck” with attempts to crack down on the internet, saying: “That’s like trying to nail Jell-o to the wall.” Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make complacent.
What I’m reading
Image control
Photographer Rankin snapped teenagers and gave them their image to edit until they felt it was “social media ready”, then posted both versions on Instagram. The results help to explain why we are living in a world of “Snapchat dysmorphia”.
Give me your answer do
In a piece subtitled “Amazon, Alexa and the search for the one perfect answer”, Wired has published a fascinating essay on voice interfaces and what they might do to our world.
The drones have it
Government Business makes an interesting argument in an article on “changes in the drone economy 2018” for taking drone technology seriously.
