This time, Beijing has embraced the opposite philosophy: a digital panopticon, enlisting private tech firms to expand China’s internet of things and enmesh its own people. The technologies being honed in Xinjiang, driven by this kind of illiberal innovation, may be coming soon to an app store near you. Until recently, China was dismissed as an innovation laggard that copied technology from the West. Today, many Chinese tech sectors have leapfrogged Silicon Valley, sometimes with heavy-handed help from the party. The Uighurs of Xinjiang are the first in human history to fully experience the downside of China’s illiberal innovation.

Source: New York Times May 02, 2019 09:56 UTC