‘Ian Williams has written a superb and deeply informed study on containing a technological totalitarian state. It is a chilling reminder to all who believe in the rule of law and an open society of China's present threats to our way of life’
Chris Patten (Lord Patten of Barnes), last governor of Hong Kong and current Chancellor of Oxford University
China is building the world s first digital totalitarian state, a system of hitherto unimaginable social and political control. Internet freedom has been eliminated and ubiquitous surveillance cameras employ the latest facial recognition technology
Through flagrant cyber espionage, it has plundered Western technology on a massive scale, bullied Western tech companies and academics (though many have been willing accomplices) and intimidated critics worldwide. In doing so, it has become a model for aspiring dictators everywhere.
Ian Williams examines the extraordinary rise of the Chinese surveillance state, showing how it has been driven by the enigmatic Xi Jinping, now effectively president for life, and how it impacts the daily lives of Chinese citizens, particularly dissidents and those from ethnic minorities. Supporting interviews and first-hand accounts from those whose lives have been turned upside down or worse highlight the chilling and ruthless efficiency with which the government can now act.
The book also considers the wider implications for the rest of the world. How to deal with an increasingly strident, aggressive Beijing is one of the biggest challenges facing the West in what has become a technological cold war.
With Chris Patten at the Barnes Bookfest in September 2021. The former governor of Hong Kong and I discussed China, Hong Kong and my book on China’s surveillance state, Every Breath You Take: China’s New Tyranny. Patten described the books as ‘a superb and deeply informed study on containing a technological totalitarian state’.
‘A devastating exposé’
— The Daily Mail
‘Fascinating ... a really interesting book. China has no private companies ... you are always dealing with the Chinese Communist State whenever you deal with them. An unarguable fact'
— Stig Abell, Times Radio
'Williams knows his stuff, as an award-winning foreign correspondent reporting for a quarter of a century from Asia with a special interest in China. This is an accessible, valuable, troubling, timely book'
— Iain Martin, Reaction Life
Irish Times, 31 July 2021
Every Breath You Take exposes what is going on in China and the threat it poses to the world, but also, as Williams chillingly puts it, serves as “a grim warning about what happens when these technologies are introduced without any oversight, without any restraint, without any regulation. Read More
The Bookseller, 9 March 2021