The dystopian surveillance world depicted in George Orwell’s 1984 has, under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), become an everyday reality. According to research by Chinese-American political scientist Minxin Pei, the CCP employs tens of millions of “informants,” “eyes and ears,” and intelligence operatives to monitor millions of citizens deemed potential threats. Yet Pei cautions that surveillance is no cure-all, as the regime continues to grapple with corruption, economic stagnation, and internal insecurity.
In his recent book, Pei challenges the widespread belief that China’s control over its 1.4 billion people relies primarily on cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, facial recognition, and high-definition cameras. Instead, he argues that the true strength of the CCP’s surveillance system lies in its vast organizational reach and mobilization capacity. A wide array of ordinary citizens – food delivery workers, taxi drivers, postal employees, shop owners, business managers, residential committee members, healthcare professionals, teachers, cleaners, hotel operators, and even temple monks – have been recruited as grassroots intelligence gatherers.
Drawing on official documents, Pei estimates that during the 2010s, China maintained between 10.2 and 15.8 million informants, along with 560,000 “special intelligence personnel” as of 2022, and 830,000 to 1.2 million “eyes and ears” active in any given year. These dense informant networks monitor assigned “positions” such as commercial sites, Tibetan temples, university campuses, and online spaces. Surveillance targets – numbering between 7.3 and 12.7 million – include habitual petitioners, protesters, ethnic minorities, and religious figures.
Despite this pervasive monitoring apparatus, sporadic protests still erupt, such as the 2022 White Paper Movement opposing zero-COVID restrictions. Pei notes that such spontaneous demonstrators often fall outside established watchlists, exposing a critical weakness in the CCP’s system of preemptive control. While economic modernization has historically fostered democratization in other nations, in China it has instead furnished the regime with greater resources to refine its surveillance state.
Pei warns that unresolved corruption, deepening economic decline, and rising elite anxiety triggered by Xi Jinping’s ongoing political purges could ultimately erode the regime’s stability from within.
Source: Central News Agency (Taiwan), October 9, 2025
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/acn/202510090070.aspx