Lynette H. Ong is Distinguished Professor of Chinese Politics at the University of Toronto and director of the China Governance Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. She is the author (with Huihua Nie and Jesslene Lee) of Outsourcing Surveillance: Online Opinion Management in China (2026).
Beijing knows digital surveillance of the world’s most populous nation is technologically demanding. So the Party has hired corporations to occupy the “public-opinion battlefield” and spot the trouble before it spreads.
The regime’s ill-fated policy to eliminate covid from China spurred the largest protests in a generation. It also made Xi Jinping’s challenge of maintaining authoritarian control over Chinese society even harder.
