China’s surveillance extends state control into every digital and social domain of Uyghur life.

Evidence

Beyond the walls of the concentration camps, Xinjiang—like Gaza—has become an open-air prison for Uyghur Muslims like Abdulla, whose every word is monitored and whose religious expression is closely policed. The eyes of spies and the gaze of the state are everywhere, and most nefariously, are built into the phones and virtual behavior of everybody in China. “Digital totalitarianism” is dystopian reality for Abdulla and other Uyghurs, a reality in which “the Communist Party dismantle[s] traditional domains of affiliation, identity, and social meaning—family, religion, civil society, intellectual discourse, political freedom.” — Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamophobia and the…, 572

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to ‘digital totalitarianism’ literature (e.g., We by Zamyatin’s surveillance state, though that is inverse — state-the-narrative rather than surveillance) and to contemporary surveillance capitalism critiques.