CHINA Big Brother

China is a country on the path to global dominance in technology and renewable energy. Big brother is watching, surveillance is everywhere, and artificial intelligence and facial recognition track and monitor all its citizens. Those who transgress can lose basic rights via the Social Credit System.

China’s leader Xi Jinping, president a second term, has a lifetime’s rule to push his idea of a rejuvenated “Stronger, Longer, Bigger” China, a country on the path to global dominance in technology and renewable energy. China is the world's largest mobile payment market, with cash obsolete, where yearly mobile payments account for 5 trillion dollars. Transactions and communications pass through mobile applications like Alipay and Wechat. All activity and data is logged and monitored. Big Brother is watching, surveillance is everywhere. China aims to have one surveillance camera per person by 2030. The government is working to create a techno-authoritarian state powered by artificial intelligence and facial recognition to track and monitor all its citizens. In a decade China plans to build a $150 billion industry by becoming a world leader in the field of artificial intelligence, and is already selling its ‘Big Brother’ surveillance technology to ‘abusive governments’. China's “Social Credit System”, expected to be fully operational by 2020, doesn't just monitor the nation's almost 1.4 billion citizens, it’s designed to control and coerce them, in a gigantic social engineering experiment, where penalties include being shamed in public, losing access to rapid trains and high speed internet. The country's 19 super regions have a proliferation of mega cities, needing extraordinary levels of energy including hi-tech renewable energy systems to run them. China’s investment in sustainable energy produces more wind, electric battery powered, hydro and solar power than other countries. Solar panels and wind turbines cover the hillsides, providing free energy for poorer citizens. Since the 1980s China also planted 66 billion trees, building a great green wall around the Gobi Desert.

China’s strict state controlled capitalism, with its hunger for development and massive construction programs, brings huge pressure to bear both on its people and the country’s resources. To keep high ratings, good citizens are obliged to venerate the state and its culture. Chinese tourists take holidays in Beijing, flocking in their thousands to Tiananmen Square, to the west, the site of student insurrections, to the Chinese a place to pay homage to Mao and witness the changing of the colours. The rest of the year, they work even harder, longer hours and invest in property for themselves and for their leader’s dream. Mega-cities explode with compulsory purchases of farmers land and destruction of villages. New apartment buildings are sold before they have been built or stand empty for ages. The rush to win markets results in intense competition between start-ups, with overproduction and waste; such as the shared-bike market, where hundreds of thousands of bicycles are placed in "bike cemeteries" outside major cities. Surveillance monitoring of ‘jay walking' tracks Chinese citizens crossing red lights, where a 3 time offence translates into a ¥20 penalty, and means points off a citizen’s social credit rating. Interactive robots begin to replace staff in banks and hotel receptions, robot waiters distribute meals in restaurants, and with facial recognition retail, no staff need be present at all...