Guarding Dictatorship: The organization, tactics, and scale of China's surveillance state

The Hoover Project on China's Global Sharp Power invites you to Guarding Dictatorship: The organization, tactics, and scale of China's surveillance state on Tuesday, April 12, 2022, from 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm PT, in partnership with CDDRL and the China Program at APARC.

China has built an extensive, sophisticated, and highly effective apparatus to monitor the activities of its population and target, in particular, perceived threats to regime security. China's "whole-of-nation" approach has produced a surveillance apparatus few dictatorships can match. The country's rapid economic growth also allows the Communist Party to upgrade the technological capabilities of this apparatus and strengthen its political monopoly. Featuring Minxin Pei (Senior Fellow, Claremont-McKenna College). Followed by a conversation with Larry Diamond (Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, and Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at FSI), Jean Oi (Senior Fellow at FSI, Director of the China Program at APARC), and Glenn Tiffert (Research Fellow, Hoover Institution).

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Minxin Pei is the Tom and Margot Pritzker '72 Professor of Government and chairman of the Government Department at Claremont McKenna College. He specializes in Chinese domestic politics, economic reform, and foreign policy. Dr. Pei is also a non-resident senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and was the inaugural Library of Congress Chair in U.S.-China Relations (2019).

FOLLOWED BY A CONVERSATION WITH

Jean C. Oi is the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics in the Department of Political Science and a senior fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. She directs the China Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) and is the Lee Shau Kee Director of the Stanford Center at Peking University.

Glenn Tiffert is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a historian of modern China. He co-chairs the Hoover project on China’s Global Sharp Power and works closely with government and civil society partners to document and build resilience against authoritarian interference with democratic institutions. Most recently, he co-authored and edited Global Engagement: Rethinking Risk in the Research Enterprise (2020).

MODERATED BY

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, ​Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He co-chairs the Hoover Institution’s programs on China’s Global Sharp Power and on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region.