The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China

Minxin Pei’s The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China is a deeply researched study of how the CCP maintains authoritarian rule through a multilayered system of distributed surveillance. Pei challenges the popular belief that China’s stability is primarily due to economic performance or cutting‑edge technology. Instead, he shows that:

• Human surveillance—not AI—is the backbone of the system. Millions of informants, neighborhood committees, and embedded party actors monitor daily life.
• Three core security agencies—the Ministry of State Security, Ministry of Public Security, and local police stations—anchor the system, each with separate jurisdictions to prevent power concentration.