This open access book offers unique insight into how and where ideas and instruments of quantification have been adopted, and how they have come to matter. Rather than asking what quantification is, New Politics of Numbers explores what quantification does, its manifold consequences in multiple domains. It scrutinizes the power of numbers in terms of the changing relations between numbers and democracy, the politics of evidence, and dreams and schemes of bettering society. The book engages Foucault inspired studies of quantification and the economics of convention in a critical dialogue. In so doing, it provides a rich account of the plurality of possible ways in which numbers have come to govern, highlighting not only their disciplinary effects, but also the collective mobilization capacities quantification can offer. This book will be invaluable reading for academics and graduate students in a wide variety of disciplines, as well as policymakers interested in the opportunities and pitfalls of governance by numbers.

"The Chinese Social-Credit System Experience - A National Reputation System In The Making" is a subject very much calling out to be further explored by Americans, in particular. What follows is an examination of a social, business, political and legal point-based system for determining good and bad businesses and citizens - among other things; and what can result from such ratings.What this book presents is the views of journalists and scholars looking from the outside, but also of journalists and scholars looking at this significant social, business, political and legal development from the inside - and even from one of the most important developers of the system himself!Lin Junyue is the name of that developer, and in the highly detailed article "Retrospect: 1999-2009 Achievements In Social Credit Construction Of China", he tells the important early story of the development of the Chinese Social-Credit System. It is foundational information that sets the stage for the studies which follow in the book - among them, the most important feature the writings and translation work of Rogier Creemers.Yes, the scholar, Rogier Creemers, is an important contributor to understanding the amazing breadth of details involved in this social credit system. He lends crucial translation and editing work to the official Chinese government presentation of the "Planning Outline for the Construction of a Social Credit System (2014-2020)" of June 14, 2014, and updated on April 25, 2015. And he also brings great understanding of the system with his own article of May 9, 2018, titled, "China's Social Credit System: An Evolving Practice Of Control."There are numerous unfavorable critiques of such an enormous undertaking, with so many implications for Chinese political, economic, social and legal policy-making. But the development of such a system could have widespread global implications as well, if others should choose to use China's system as an example for their own! Probably the greatest criticism is directed at measures that could be seen as Orwellian, dystopian, Big Brother public/government intrusion, characterized by more widespread public surveillance, and less personal privacy. The other target of heavy criticism is the idea of using something like a very public point system to rate people and businesses - and the effects such ratings can have!Nevertheless there are some positives to a system like the one envisioned by the Chinese, if perhaps somewhat toned-down in terms of intrusiveness. The most positive feature, especially through the eyes of the Chinese, is that this is a "sincere" effort to bring more trustworthiness and moral value to the actions and behaviors of citizens, businesses and government officials. And in this day and age of what is happening in the U.S. politically, it's hard to find fault with such a sentiment! And the idea of bringing sincerity, trustworthiness and behavior based on better moral values is a longstanding and treasured Chinese aim and desire! As it "should" be globally!Especially important is that a great deal of this system has strong economic and potential legal implications for businesses in China - both domestic and foreign, because businesses and industrial development could be subject to strong government influence based on political, economical and social priorities determined by the central government!And globally, people need to be aware of what is happening in China, because of the implications these developments could have for the worldwide community, whatever the form their current social, political and economic systems take!

Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject Communications - Ethics in the Media, grade: 1,0, University of St. Gallen, language: English, abstract: This paper discusses China’s social credit system. In a speech on October 14th in 2018, American Vice President Mike Pence accused China of building “an Orwellian system premised on controlling virtually every facet of human life”. These accusations refer to the so-called Chinese Social Credit System (SCS), a radical undertaking of the Chinese Communist Party, making use of technologies such as ubiquitous computing, big data and artificial intelligence combined with participatory digital media, intending to construct a scoring system for its citizens and corporate entities in China. In the past years, China’s initiative has been heavily criticized by leading Western media outlets and politicians, compared to the Netflix series Black Mirror or Big Brother and described as a sinister future dystopia. The reality, however, is complicated and requires a critical analysis. In a first step, it will be explained what the scoring system exactly is and how it operates, taking the political system and cultural background into consideration. Next, the implications for Chinese people as well as society will be critically assessed, and it will be discussed whether this system is indeed a dystopian vision of mass surveillance or rather an opportunity for a better society.

The Stasi were among the most successful security and intelligence services in the Cold War. Behind the Berlin Wall, colleagues, friends, husbands and wives, informed on each other. Stasi chief, General Mielke, prided himself on this situation. Under Marcus Wolf, Stasi agents were spectacularly successful in gaining entry into the West German Establishment and NATO. Some remain undiscovered. Now, for the first time in English, two British experts reveal how the Stasi operated. Based on a wealth of sources, including interviews with former Stasi officers and their victims, the book tells a fascinating yet frightening story of unbridled power, misguided idealism, treachery, widespread opportunism and lonely courage.

Where is the line between digital utopia and digital police state? Surveillance State tells the gripping, startling, and detailed story of how China’s Communist Party is building a new kind of political control: shaping the will of the people through the sophisticated—and often brutal—harnessing of data. It is a story born in Silicon Valley and America’s “War on Terror,” and now playing out in alarming ways on China’s remote Central Asian frontier. As ethnic minorities in a border region strain against Party control, China’s leaders have built a dystopian police state that keeps millions under the constant gaze of security forces armed with AI. But across the country in the city of Hangzhou, the government is weaving a digital utopia, where technology helps optimize everything from traffic patterns to food safety to emergency response. Award-winning journalists Josh Chin and Liza Lin take readers on a journey through the new world China is building within its borders, and beyond. Telling harrowing stories of the people and families affected by the Party’s ambitions, Surveillance State reveals a future that is already underway—a new society engineered around the power of digital surveillance.

As the Internet diffuses across the globe, many have come to believe that the technology poses an insurmountable threat to authoritarian rule. Grounded in the Internet's early libertarian culture and predicated on anecdotes pulled from diverse political climates, this conventional wisdom has informed the views of policymakers, business leaders, and media pundits alike. Yet few studies have sought to systematically analyze the exact ways in which Internet use may lay the basis for political change. In O pen Networks, Closed Regimes, the authors take a comprehensive look at how a broad range of societal and political actors in eight authoritarian and semi-authoritarian countries employ the Internet. Based on methodical assessment of evidence from these cases—China, Cuba, Singapore, Vietnam, Burma, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt—the study contends that the Internet is not necessarily a threat to authoritarian regimes.

The "world's factory" has long been patronized as a place of copying, rather than creativity. But in fact, since its founding, the People's Republic has been driven by dreams of rapid modernization and innovation, with engineers turned politicians drafting policy at Zhongnanhai. Apps in China now operate at scales American entrepreneurs only dream of.Our China issue explores the situation on the ground, from biometric surveillance of Muslims in Xinjiang to the new global map that Chinese tech is drawing.