Surveillance Authoritarianism: How Digital Technology Transforms Political Control in China

Mass surveillance is often associated with fear, repression, and pervasive mistrust. Yet China has built one of the world's most extensive digital surveillance states without generating the widespread fear and public backlash that the familiar Orwellian image of surveillance would suggest. How can mass surveillance become a sustainable instrument of authoritarian rule?

Surveillance Authoritarianism examines how digital technology transforms the relationship between surveillance, repression, and political legitimacy. While surveillance strengthens authoritarian regimes' ability to identify and deter opposition, it also generates social and political costs that can undermine its effectiveness. Digital surveillance helps mitigate these constraints through its relatively unintrusive nature, its provision of public goods, and its capacity to enable targeted and less visible repression. Experimental and observational evidence from China shows how digital surveillance can deter dissent without generating the same degree of interpersonal mistrust and loss of regime support associated with traditional informer-based surveillance. These findings offer a new perspective on how technology reshapes authoritarian control in the digital age.

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Co-hosted with: Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies, Center on Contemporary China (OWNER)