Transcription
[Music] June 2 Hello. Do you smoke all the time? What time is it? I don't know. Come on, let's go look at your points. At how many? Well, same, it doesn't change every day, you know. How many do you want to reach? I don't know, I'm not at the maximum. It's possible. I don't know what we're going to do today? We're going shopping. My name is Sébastien, I'm French. Lulu is my wife, she's Chinese. We live in Beijing. We're going to film ourselves like this for a year. Do you agree? But I don't have any privacy here. Besides, we don't have any privacy anyway. No, be quiet. Living in China is more than a habit. It's a survival mode. Apparently, at my place, there are no spy cameras. But sometimes, there would really be enough to become paranoid. [Music] Did you Did you take the keys? H, you're taking them. Welcome to our apartment in the north of Beijing. You're taking the keys on the edge of the 4th ring road. This is where I live with Lulu. Did you take the cards? I've been a journalist in China since 2007. We lead an ordinary couple's life, with one detail. We are never truly alone in our hallway or in our elevator; they are everywhere. [Music] [Applause] [Music] In China, there is at least one surveillance camera for every two inhabitants. [Music] Electronic eyes that watch us constantly. [Music] Today, Lulu wants to show me the city hall's latest find. Is this what you want to show us? Well, yes. Ah, it's the screen over there. In fact, it's a screen if you cross on a red light, whether by car or on foot, and then they put you on the screen. And what's the point of putting you on the screen? It's to show everyone that you did something forbidden, and it serves later. You lose points. No, wait, we're not going to cross on red. So, the cars, on the other hand, they don't respect it. No, they'll show you too, you know. It's the same, you know. It's not just for pedestrians, it's for everyone. Did you see? Did you see the girl crossing? What do you think of this system? Well, it's, well, it's to force people to follow the rules, to not do stupid things. There you go. Well, in a way, it's like we're being treated like children. [Applause] 23 million children in Beijing, 1.4 billion in China. [Music] Children like my wife, rated, punished, or rewarded according to their behavior. An entire population placed under surveillance. Cameras in the streets, applications on mobile phones, insurance files, criminal records, your banking score, your medical file. In China, all data is digital, instantaneous. Smart cities, supposed to use 5G and big data to improve local life, are in fact large surveillance networks. [Music] Taking the metro, buying food, choosing a book. All daily actions are archived by the great digital harvester. The harvest is done by the regime, which mixes all this data to build the digital portrait of each citizen. All Chinese people now have a digital double that lives its life on Beijing's computer servers. A double that is rated, calibrated, judged by the party's computers. [Music] For citizens, it looks like a game or a loyalty program. Loyalty earns points. Criticisms lower the credit. This is the daily life of my wife Lulu and her compatriots, confronted with this counter that judges their lives every day, every hour, every second. My wife is not a journalist; she works in marketing. It's to understand how this technological and social revolution impacts her life that I decided to film her daily life. Ah, the day begins, and we can't live without our phones. It starts with a smartphone. I need to order a car. Mobile phones in China, even more than elsewhere in the world, are indispensable. The country has over a billion subscribers, and nothing escapes the applications that Lulu has installed on her smartphone. What do we see on the application? We see his name, the number of trips. Yes, we see his name and his car. What brand, what color, the license plate, his name, and how many trips he's made. How long has he had his license? Everything. So far, nothing really exceptional. However, here, the entire trip is filmed and recorded with this small camera installed above the rearview mirror. For the rest, the operation is identical to what we know. We rate the driver; he rates us in return. In China, ratings have become the norm, as everywhere on the planet. We give bonus points for every online order, every train or plane trip. We rate by giving a thumbs up on social networks; evaluations that influence a person's popularity or a company's reliability. But on Planet China, all these interactions, all these likes are data that are cross-referenced and grouped in a digital safe, of which the government holds the key. Activity on social networks, but also purchases, travel, conversations, private lives stored in a code installed by every Chinese person on their mobile phone. [Music] The Covid-19 epidemic allowed the government to add this additional tool to its existing data collection system. The QR code. Its official objective? To trace movements and contacts to combat the spread of the virus. We use it everywhere to go to the hairdresser. Take your phone and scan this one. Ah yes, you have to scan. Scan the middle one with Richard to do our shopping, go to a restaurant, every building we've entered, every person we've met, the QR code knows everything about our actions because in China, this snitch is installed within the very applications without which we cannot live. Alipay, a payment application comparable to Apple Pay, is developed by Alibaba, Amazon's competitor. Taobao, Lulu's favorite online shopping site. Not to mention Tencent, the developer of WeChat, the IT Swiss Army knife with which we chat, pay, and scan constantly. A kind of multitasking WhatsApp. [Music] [Music] All these applications deployed by Chinese tech giants, collectors of personal data, data that directly feeds the party's constant surveillance system. [Music] I have an appointment with Fenzoyan. He is a data analyst. The meeting is set in a very trendy neighborhood of Beijing. [Music] He will confirm to me that the health crisis has indeed accelerated the data collection system directly through the applications installed on mobile phones. Let's compare the health code system to a cake. At the beginning, the engineers, the inventors of tech companies like Alibaba and Tencent come up with an idea, a cake recipe. They present it to the government. Only government services have the right to request personal data, such as that held by airlines, railway companies, or mobile phone companies. They can only use this information under certain conditions. The government therefore provides the necessary ingredients for the cake. But to mix the ingredients and prepare the cake, only the tech companies can. The government is not the baker. Then, we will consider that governments have the right to ask online payment platforms to provide them with transaction details under certain conditions. Here too, the question is how to find a balance between the protection of personal data and what the government has the right to do? This discussion today animates the whole world. But the debate is not new. Since the late 1980s, population control through data mastery has been introduced with China's opening to the market economy. The country awakens to fried chicken, Ferraris, and money. Lots of money. A little tune of emancipation quickly silenced by the party. Mao's little grandchildren will not be freer; they will be rich. In exchange for access to consumer goods, the lives of Chinese people will no longer hold any secrets for the party. Beijing will regulate financial flows in its own way, control consumption, and thus control people. [Music] My wife Lulu is a child of mass consumption [Music] and mobile phones. She is one of those Chinese people who buy, spend, plan vacations, and imagine a retirement in the sun. Since the People's Court of Commerce placed the revolution in liquidation, her generation is enjoying the great boom. [Music] It is on this thirst for consumption that the Chinese financial credit system was born in the 1980s. But first, Beijing wants to understand, to understand this strange mechanism of the market economy and to familiarize itself with credit. Shinda tells us this story. He is a law professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, the most reputable university in the country. According to the cliché in the West, China copies what is best in the West. The ancestor of Chinese social credit is in the USA. The story is that some officials made a trip to the United States. The purpose of this visit was to understand why there was not as much fraud in the American market as in the Chinese market. They discovered that the United States had implemented a mechanism called a credit system, a rating system with a law that regulated access but also the value of credits. If you had committed fraud during a transaction, it was recorded in your credit file and therefore appeared in your personal file. Consequently, if you later wanted to take out a new loan or do new business, the incident that had been reported was likely to prevent you from doing so. You were no longer trustworthy. The party will find a much broader opportunity for control in its financial regulation mechanisms. And if solvency, consumer habits, allowed a score to be established. This is where the temptation of social credit arises. Assigning a score to citizens based on their purchasing behavior. A system of good and bad points to achieve the ideal of an integrated and harmonious society. A program detailed in the five-year plan was made public by the Chinese government in June 2014 in this document. [Music] The social credit system is an important element of the socialist market economy system and the social governance system. Incentives for reliability and constraints for untrustworthiness are used as rewards and punishments. The acceleration of the construction of a social credit system is an important basis for the full implementation of the concept of technological development and the construction of a harmonious socialist society. A system in which financial information would be cross-referenced with civic behavior. A life score creating a new social order with first, second, third, or fourth-class citizens. The idea is that if you accumulate points, you can use these points to benefit from privileged access to certain public services. For example, you could be admitted to a public hospital without having to pay a deposit. The same for seeing a doctor. You could be able to go to certain parks without paying an entrance ticket. You could access discount coupons by using public transport, all that kind of thing. I think that in some cities, you could go to the public library and borrow books without having to leave a deposit thanks to your good score. For now, these are the types of benefits you could get, but it's quite insignificant for now. And my wife in all this, does Lulu have enough credit in the government's eyes? In any case, she's a good student. Her counter shows 5 more points. These little points were probably earned thanks to her good consumption habits, her civic sense, and her respect for the rules. [Music] Will analyze her score. Is it good or bad? We see that you can do quite a lot of things. You see for accommodation, with the score you have, you can stay in these different hotels without a deposit. For transport, you can get discounts, and even now, look, it's very interesting, visas for Canada, Argentina, and Lebanon. This doesn't mean that with this, you can get a visa at the Canadian embassy without providing personal documents. But since your score reaches a certain level, you won't need to provide certain documents to the embassy. But it doesn't mean you can get a visa solely with a good score. That's unthinkable. And well, now this score can be useful. It can be accepted by embassies. For Lulu, it's the promise of greater ease of travel thanks to the good score displayed on her application. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Did you know all this? No, I didn't know some of it. It's less scary than we thought. No, it's not scary at all. [Music] Well, Lulu is not as scared as I am of this 100% digital world, a society where no one can hide, where all daily actions are analyzed, interpreted, stored, where a mobile phone can make us good or bad citizens. It's not stuck. But are you a little worried about being monitored with your phone too, because ultimately everything is controlled? Well, I haven't done anything wrong. If someone wants to know if it interests them, go ahead, for now. Would you prefer to live with it or refuse it? Why refuse? We can't refuse now. You could refuse. I don't refuse. It's so convenient. It makes life easy. So, you can't, you can't leave it anymore. The companies that made WeChat and Alipay, they know everything about you. Are you more afraid of these companies or more afraid of the state that follows you? We can't say it's scary. We can say sometimes it's a bit annoying. For example, you make a stupid joke sometimes, if you touch on political subjects, it can quickly lead to someone calling you to scold you. Did you change your way of life? No, I haven't changed my way of life. I haven't changed. [Music] The real question to ask is this: are we going to turn back and go back to the time when we didn't have smartphones, a time when there were no cameras? And if the direction of history is to accept all this? If we decide to live with it. You know, everything evolves. All this data and surveillance bring us positive things. For example, greater security, greater safety, better efficiency. That's what people want today, provided that certain values are not lost. Or else, we have to live with it. Does the population really have a choice? Do they have any alternatives other than accepting the new general living conditions imposed by the regime? But after all, as Lulu says, you feel that it's convenient. The logic of global surveillance systematically accompanies the changes in Chinese society by relying on technological progress. [Music] This is the case with the disappearance of a species that appeared in the 11th century in China: the banknote. Little by little in Beijing, banknotes, anonymous by nature, are disappearing in favor of contactless payment, perfectly traceable by the regime. And ironically, with each denomination withdrawn from circulation, the face of Mao fades a little more from the daily lives of Chinese people. Incredible! When I remember that until the 2010s, I had to pay everything in cash and my foreign credit cards were almost never accepted. [Music] Today, state television even advertises this society to foreigners. A world where everything is easier, provided you accept in exchange to have no secrets from the party. of a life without cash. So pervasive is hard to find. But even more advanced technology is entering our daily lives, Lulu's and mine. So, what do you want? Water. That's good. Just water like that? Is it okay? Yes. This one or that one? Up. Oh, it's much more expensive. So, we pay with our heads. Yes, well, it's a payment. And here is payment at the customer's head. That's it. So, we just paid for the bottle of water with facial recognition. That's it. Do you know how they know your face, huh? How do you think you can pay with your face? P, you choose, pay with your head or with QR code. And how does it recognize your face, do you think? Well, it's registered, when you register on Alipay, there's a head scan. It's registered in the payment system. What do you think of it? It's good. It feels weird. No, no, it feels very funny. It feels funny. [Music] Name, first name, address, phone number, movements, purchase history, and now face. All this data is compiled, associated, aggregated. In the end, it's not sure that all this is so funny. On every face, the party can now read all the intimacy of Chinese private lives. A mass surveillance tool at the center of Chinese government investments. Over the years, Beijing will gain its technological independence and break free from foreign companies in the field of facial recognition and artificial intelligence. [Music] Chiinan is the vice-president of Megv Technology in Beijing. This Chinese unicorn is one of the world leaders in facial recognition. A technology sold notably to the police. A system capable of identifying an individual in real-time via video surveillance cameras. This complex facial recognition software, here it is in this promotional video made in the style of a Hollywood trailer. Mr. Lee, a financial offender on the run since 2016, was spotted by Sky and the police were alerted. After verification, he was quickly arrested. We call this the brain of the city. On one hand, there is private use, and on the other, security use controlled by the police. We already work with 27 Chinese provinces to ensure their security, and our technology has helped arrest over 3,000 offenders. This program, called Smart Ice, intelligent eyes, is integrated into a much larger global project, a network called Skynet. A nod to the artificial intelligence system that takes control of the planet in the movie Terminator. The objective is to be able to identify anyone, anywhere, thanks to hundreds of millions of surveillance cameras. [Music] Today, we can gather important information about vehicles as well as people, including particular characteristics. The type of vehicle, people's hairstyles, the clothes they wear, if they are on a bicycle, if they are carrying a bag. All these details can be recorded. All this allows us to analyze everything that is really happening in the city daily. For example, in this street, we can know what type of car is circulating, at what time traffic changes. For example, if there are traffic jams or an accident, what is the predominant type of people using this street? So, if we need to know what happened at a given moment and what type of person was present, it's very easy to know. This is what we call the urban sky eye. Information and technology that also allow us to predict, to anticipate the behavior of individuals in public spaces. And all this thanks to big data and artificial intelligence. [Music] It is estimated that Chinese research in artificial intelligence is two decades ahead of its direct competitors. I'm heading to Tsinghua University to meet Professor Souwangda, one of the researchers who has contributed most to the development of this technology since the early 2000s. [Music] During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government was the first to use facial recognition. It was the first time in the world that it was used in Olympic circumstances. Subsequently, the Universal Exposition, as well as numerous events requiring a very high level of security, were able to use facial recognition. This was possible thanks to significant state support. This raises the level of public security. That is why the population can live in a harmonious society, a safer society. That is why facial recognition must receive the support of the population. It has many advantages. There are companies that have individual data on over 100 million people. The reason facial recognition is so successful is because the volume of data is immense. [Music] And the volume of data is expected to increase further with advances in facial recognition. [Music] They say that now, in addition to the face, people can also be identified by their movements. [Music] Yes, there is research on gait or iris or other movements, but for now, the recognition rate by movements is still low, and we are not at the level of real use. It remains a very useful technology for building safer cities, a safer China. Recognizing people, predicting their behavior, controlling and observing their daily lives. Surveillance has always been the raison d'être of the party-state. Since 1949 and the birth of the People's Republic of China, Beijing has had eyes everywhere. Political commissars, neighborhood committees, they were the eyes and ears of public security closest to the population. A network designed for a people who did not travel, for a country closed off to foreigners. [Music] But Chinese society was going to change. It was going to move from one city to another, from one region to another, from one country to another. Here too, the party has the solution to maintain its effective surveillance. [Music] Hello. Today, we're going away for the weekend to Shanghai, 1300 km from Beijing. Lulu booked her trip via Alipay, one of the applications installed on her smartphone. 757, that's the points. My wife is a good customer, well-rated. Her credit is high enough for her order to go through. [Music] We're heading to the South Station, one of the three in the capital. And there, you might think that taking transport in China is very easy. But when my wife booked her train ticket, the application didn't just check her bank balance; Alipay went much further. All the details of Lulu's private and social life, like that of all her compatriots, are digitized on her phone. [Music] There, in two scans, it's done. We scan our heads to enter the station and again to access the train, and that's it. The application has cross-referenced a much larger set of data and authorized her to buy her ticket and therefore to travel. [Music] If you have been placed on the blacklist after committing a crime or if you have been judged by a court as a bad payer in a financial dispute, the judgment is published on the court's website. This information, this blacklist, can also be communicated to railway companies or air authorities. So, they have access to all this information, and when you want to buy a train or plane ticket, you have to provide your identity number. That's how they catch you on the train. Lulu will continue to build her credit by spending through her application. Still the QR code. More facial recognition. [Music] I can change my face. And once again, all this data is transmitted to Alipay's servers. My wife is taking care of her credit and remains a good citizen. Her biggest fear is falling below the 350-point threshold and joining the ranks of second-class citizens. [Music] Upon our arrival at the hotel, the scenario repeats itself. We were able to book a room at this Shanghai hotel thanks to Lulu's good score. This is my ID photo, a bad credit score, and a blacklisted entry. And this type of establishment would have been forbidden to us. This blacklist is the heart of the great Social Credit project. It is the ultimate algorithm ready to be deployed at any moment by the Chinese party-state. A system in which virtuous behavior is encouraged and rewarded. For those who cross the line, the sanction is immediate and immediately lowers the score. And perhaps this is the party's greatest victory. Regulating behavior without needing to use the stick. Some laws say that the social credit system is designed to improve the efficiency of market regulation but also to promote good values. The question is always how to use this system. Honestly, you can use it. One could write a sociological study. Obviously, you can say that with this system, people will be more careful about what they say, what they commit to, and therefore will stick to it. They will become more honest, more honest, and especially more respectful of the rules. And it starts with knowing how to cross the street within the lines. Those who resist this ideal of a harmonious society can no longer hide. Ah, I was scared because earlier a girl and a boy, they said it was someone and they caught him, they put his head on the big screen. It's scary, isn't it? And then, what happens to you? Do you pay a fine? No, but imagine, you do it all the time, and now you scan your head everywhere, and then imagine, you get bad points. You find your head in the middle of the street here. It's weird, you know. Don't run red lights, okay? Be good. In fact, they generally cross on green. Look, we see. Ah yes, yes. And then, otherwise, they put your photo on the big screen. It's shameful. But what happens? We're trying to cross on red to see. Ah no, I'm not doing that. Well, it's only foreigners who do that. Even foreigners here, they're dirty. Did you see? Nobody does. Did you see? If I cross, my photo will appear. It's nice. Ah, but if you want to try, go ahead. Not me. What will happen? Well, then your photo will be displayed large on the screen. It will be a festival for you. And that's how they force them. And they don't explain if they take points away or if for now it's just envisioned and displayed. No, it's just displayed. It's a big shame. It's a big shame. [Music] To ensure the effectiveness of this permanent control of public spaces and individuals, one tool is essential. The surveillance camera. It became widespread in China in the early 2000s. Surveillance of homes, businesses, shops. There are cameras everywhere. Of the 20 cities in the world most equipped with surveillance cameras, 18 are Chinese. Tongching, with 31 million inhabitants, has one camera for every 6 inhabitants. Shanghai, 26 million, one for every 9. In comparison, Nice, the most equipped French city, has one camera for every 130 inhabitants. A society under surveillance from which it is almost impossible to escape, as the eyes of the Chinese Big Brother are everywhere. [Music] In public spaces, it is impossible for Lulu to escape the dictatorship of the social score. Anonymity is disappearing from Chinese society. [Music] Social credit infiltrates even the most intimate sphere. Depending on what she consumes, her diet, Lulu's score could be lowered. This is the advent of the healthy citizen in a healthy body. [Music] In fact, do you pay or do you make yourself beautiful with your phone? Both. It's convenient. What did you buy? I bought something very good. What is health? It's tea. Tea. Imagine, imagine if, depending on what you buy, you can gain or lose points. So, I'm gaining points here because I only drink tea. And you think we'll gain points by drinking tea, of course, and we'll lose points by drinking alcohol, for example, or if you have a small beer, you'll have lost. That will happen one day, you know. Like, you have a burger or fries. Well, maybe they won't take points away, but at least it's noted. You're not living a healthy life. So, you have to drink tea. [Music] What do you want? Salad. Vegetables. Yes, yes, yes. If your credit could record what you eat, it would be good because it would force you to eat better. But sometimes, we still need to please ourselves. We can't, we can't live with an order like that. If it's included in the food category, what you eat every day, what you consume every day, it's a prison life, I think. It's like you're in prison, they bring you a tray, you have no choice. If you don't eat, you're hungry or you starve. But still, we are humans. [Music] Lulu is not really decided to condition her existence according to prohibitions rather than her desires or aspirations. But while it is not yet fully deployed, social credit is already imposing itself in people's minds as the new thinking software. Where are we going? Bookstore, library. [Music] And and the book of 1st, 2nd, 3rd is the thought of Xi Jinping. Yes. Buying the three volumes of the Chinese president's political vision or a geographical narrative devoted to Xi Jinping, how many points would that bring to my wife's social credit? That's that's that's acquiring a copy of Mao's poems or an authorized biography of Deng Xiaoping, in fact, the political section right at the entrance, would that allow Lulu to access the grail of 950 points for the model citizen? There are points, you buy Xi Jinping's book, you gain points. I'm already quite good. You don't read forbidden books? No, I don't know what a forbidden book is. So, uh, you're very good. No, I'm not good. I'm a normal person. [Music] A model society regulated entirely by norms, scores, and social credit. [Music] This open-space private life, some Chinese reject and denounce it. [Music] Today, Lulu and I have an appointment in the northern suburbs of Beijing. [Music] Denguang is a committed artist. His fight is the protection of data and the denunciation of big data's grip on private life. It's difficult to know Ding's social score, but his positions certainly make him a bad customer, even a debtor to the regime. These yellow flyers are his artistic performance. What do you want to show with this act? Immortal life represents all the secrets I possess as a human being. But these secrets are made public and then printed on this document. It's a kind of CV. On this CV are some basic information and even bank passwords, my WeChat account password, and some other details, even much more private details like secrets. On March 18, 2021, Deng Fang, accompanied by three volunteers and surrounded by a group of Western journalists, distributed his immortality flyers to passers-by on the avenues and streets of the 798 district of Beijing, a district where many artist studios are located. In China, denouncing the violation of privacy and the dictatorship of the digital Grim Reaper of tech giants is dangerous. Deng Fang's yellow flyers will send the artist directly to the police station and undoubtedly further lower his social credit score. They had security agents, well, something close to it. They had to call the police right after. In the end, I was arrested and imprisoned for 24 hours. Already in October 2020, the artist had made headlines. He attempted an experiment to show Beijing residents how to escape the surveillance eye. To travel through a street in Beijing without ever entering a camera's field of vision. Deng spent 2 months measuring the street. He photographed it from all angles, detailed the models of the 90 cameras, located them, but also their field of vision. It's [Music] Did you see the street, how many meters is it? The camera can film approximately. He did it all. It's a technician's job too. During the day, accompanied by a small group of volunteers, they walk up the street in single file. Heads down, crouching, the small group moves slowly. He goes down from the sidewalk, hugs the walls, hides behind advertising panels. In total, they took 2 hours to cover a little over a kilometer. [Music] For me, it speaks to how the state manages the problem. This question is about how the state has decided to act. I chose the strong approach. I wanted to make an impression because in this country, people, including you and me, have no legal knowledge. We don't really know our rights. We are not aware of legal privacy issues. In that case, you can use more effective means to raise awareness and perhaps achieve a faster result. But Denguang's fight seems lost in advance. Beijing controls the activity of tech giants, and its right to view and use data is never questioned. Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu are creatures of the party. Colossi without whom the Chinese government could never have built such a surveillance arsenal. But what state reason demands, state reason commands in China. No one is there to control the party. What remains is Lulu, my wife, and her credit. How does Lulu imagine her world and ours in 20 years? This morning, we are leaving our residence in Beijing, still under the surveillance cameras. Oh, by the way, this one wasn't here last night. [Music] This is the last stage of this journey started a year ago with Lulu. What is my Chinese wife's view of this society that promises her a life on credit, a life of which she has become the ideal customer. New technologies, can we control them 100% and use them for good? Are we strong enough to control all these new software, technologies? We don't know. We don't know. So, it makes you think. [Music] Everything you do, everything you say, you first think, do I have the right or do I not have the right? What points can I get? If they take away points, they will do something bad to us. And so, we are framing ourselves like this, like a square each. They are eating our brains and we are being trained like robots, you could say. Imagine the children born today, and in 20 years, they will be adults. And, how will the people born today be, they will be half robots, behind, but always with the look of humans. So, I suggest, Lulu, that we meet again in 20 years, and then we'll see if it has evolved as you think. If we all become robots, I hope not. In 20 years, can you still give the camera? [Music] But the story seems to be already written. To live in this new model of society, my wife should not have to wait long. Beijing has its finger on the button, the one to launch its harmonious society and put social credit into orbit. Lulu is not about to take her eyes off the little counter on her mobile phone.