Every move you make, they’ll be watching you

On my last visit to China, I was dodging phlegm; now it’s avoiding surveillance cameras, writes

Before lockdown I visited Shanghai. It was a surreal trip. What stayed with me was the scale. It is unfathomable and unnerving. There’s a sci-fi antiseptic quality that prevails in this dystopian megalopolis that’s sprung up in 20 years and crushed the vestiges of the old city into a few square kilometres of pastiche remnants of “old Shanghai”. More disturbing is the sense that you are under surveillance at all times — the streets, the promenade, the whole shebang is heavily monitored via cameras and drones and cops.

I realise that this is a global phenomenon in Beverly Hills, London, every corner of the planet, but in China it has resulted in a real difference in behaviour. The last time I visited I quickly internalised the nimble art of dodging large, phlegmy globs of expectorate being launched ostensibly at the pavement, but which could easily meet a more personal target — your shoe or worse, your leg. This seemingly national attribute is gone. Pfftt. Vanished. Not a soul spat in any direction.

I could only think that the threat of being caught on camera is real. I surmise the terminal effects on the previously widespread habit is that indulging in a little throatclearing action might result in 20 years in a re-education camp. Or losing 40,000-million points off your star chart which would mean you could no longer live in Shanghai, your children could not go to university and your pet cat would be euthanised. Surveillance communism is how the People’s Republic keeps its people on the straight and narrow.

As I boarded the plane I breathed a small sigh of relief. I had not realised I’d been holding my breath for so long. The next morning I went straight to the office, opened my laptop and discovered it was now in Chinese. I practically fainted. What in Mao’s name was going on? Had I been infected with a virus of Chinese origin?

I called in the heavy artillery. Even our chief techie was baffled. I will not lie, I started waving into the camera ... I mean, if I was now being surveilled by the Chinese state, best to put a good face on it. Make friends, influence the people. Perhaps take them on a tour of the newsroom for a spot of cultural rapprochement. The tech genius quickly put a stop to this tomfoolery. He concluded I must have picked up the wrong laptop when I went through the security check. Mine was probably being waved at right now by my equally mystified counterpart somewhere in the Chinese hinterland. The techie explained in his best bedside manner that I was not to worry, it was not terminal. He would wipe the laptop clean and we could start afresh. And, friends, that is what we did.

But I’m having second thoughts. I’ve just read that all appliances (not just Huawei) from the People’s Republic are staring right back at me in a scary tech loop that has given me pause. I should be waving at my washing machine and my fridge every time I approach with some kind of anodyne domestic need. Anything with a small microchip making my household smarter — microwaves, TVs, vacuum cleaners, laptops, smart devices, electric globes, coffee machines, doorbells, smartwatches, anything that can be operated with an app — is gathering information and sending it to intelligence headquarters in Beijing. Yes, I do wash my bedding on a Wednesday, comrade. Socks and undies on a Monday. It’s happening almost as fast as you can say targeted ad, when you type your query into Google, update your status on the

Meta enterprise’s many-tentacled social networks, or shout at Alexa to change the bloody track. Surveillance capitalism in all its glory.

The Brits are up in arms because they found one such device on a minister’s car. I have to ask ... have they ensured the minister has disabled his Siri? I thought I had broken up with that psycho stalker and switched her off on as many apps as I could. And then my car refused to function unless I switched her back on and let her suck my every move into the cloud where she’s at present sharing it with the highest bidder. Yes, Siri, I have a caffeine problem. So I ask you with a tear in my eye — a very fetching tear because I am on camera as I write this and I need to keep up appearances — which side of this technological Cold War am I feeding with all my dull data on a second by second basis?

It’s the sort of Iron Curtain detente that calls for a little poetry mangling — I think I might be drowning in surveillance and not waving at all.