Good morning. A Philadelphia police officer was killed and another was wounded early yesterday in what officials called an ambush. And the Houthis attacked an airport in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, killing at least 12 people. We have more news below, but we start today in China.
The watchtower
China has always been on guard against espionage and other forms of foreign menace. But, I could see during a recent stint there, its vigilance — often tinged with paranoia — has grown ever more intense and intrusive thanks to new technology. I first went to Beijing as a reporter in the 1980s, when communism was crumbling next door in the Soviet Union. Government minders tailed journalists whenever they left the capital. The intensity of scrutiny depended on a secret ranking system that classified foreigners in categories ranging from “friendly” to “hostile.” But the surveillance was never particularly menacing until the military moved in, guns blazing, to clear protesters from Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3, 1989. After that, I and the many other journalists who were in the square that night became enemies in the eyes of the state, accused of stoking “counterrevolutionary turmoil.” Two years later, I was expelled after obtaining internal party documents about the government’s crackdown on “splittist” sentiment — party code for cultural self-awareness — among ethnic Mongolians in the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia bordering the Soviet Union. Returning to China in September last year after decades away, I marveled, the way first-time visitors do, at the high-speed trains, its dazzling modern cities, its gung-ho embrace of the future. It was astonishing how much the country had changed, at least physically, in a few decades. The surveillance had changed, too. The government watches online activity and blocks many foreign websites. Given the omnipresent cameras and closely monitored messaging apps, there are seemingly no limits on what the state can see and hear. The bulk of the surveillance these days is done by A.I.-powered systems that alert security agencies to communication involving people considered potential troublemakers. Those systems draw on cameras that blanket the country. On the 150-yard walk from my Shanghai apartment in a gleaming new tower to the nearest subway, I counted more than 30 cameras trained on pedestrians. Life under the eye
Nearly everyone has learned to adjust. One woman, aware of nearby cameras, hushed her elderly father when he grumbled about rough treatment from police officers at a museum that celebrates early revolutionaries. An old friend whom I had arranged to meet messaged to call off our appointment: State security officers had turned up at his door and ordered him to cancel. “Every bush and tree seems like an enemy soldier,” he warned, using a Chinese idiom to describe the jittery watchfulness of the security apparatus. Many Chinese accept this as the trade-off for an explosive economy that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. I ran into a man I’d known from my studies in Shandong province in the early 1980s. He now sells private planes. He lamented a bygone era of more open discussion. But having to constantly bite one’s tongue, he said, was a modest, if regrettable, price to pay for China’s many improvements. Throughout my six-month stay, I struggled to reconcile the reality of a country that has never been richer and so seemingly full of promise with a parallel reality of brittle insecurity, in which every bush and tree hides a potential enemy. Toward the end of my stay, my wife and I decided to visit Tiananmen Square, which I had last visited on the night when soldiers attacked in June 1989. Today, the vast square in front of the Forbidden City, repaved since my previous visit, has become a by-appointment-only dead zone, full of Chinese tourists monitored by security guards and cameras. All visitors are carefully screened before entry. We had to apply for permission via WeChat, a Chinese messaging app. Once approved, we waited in line for two hours, showing our passports and computer-generated permission notification at three separate checkpoints with airport-style security. At the final check, a guard fretted that a pen carried by my wife might contain red ink, which is prohibited. The guard didn’t say why, but during the 1989 student protests several people hurled red paint at a famous portrait of Mao that faces the square. A supervisor finally let us through after an underling tested the pen and saw its ink was brown. Now out of China, I often wonder: How can it be that a proud, nuclear-armed world power is scared of red ink? In an essay today, I explain.
Into the wild: Steffen Skjottelvik went out on a wilderness adventure. Only his dogs came back. A new generation’s campus rape story: The Cornell students hit adolescence right around peak #MeToo. Is that surprising? Forbidden class: M.I.T. is paying a professor not to teach a controversial class. Why? Living in fear: A Times investigation has found that violent threats have become a new normal for public officials. Our reporter Nick Corasaniti spoke with politicians about what it’s like to live and work with threats of violence. Click to watch.
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“I see children without parents. I see children without arms and legs. How senseless does the world feel to you when you’re confronting these things?”— Mirjana Spoljaric, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, spoke to Lulu Garcia-Navarro about the nature of war. Click to watch, listen or read a transcript.
M.L.B.: The Cleveland Guardians defeated the Chicago White Sox, 2-0, in Game 5 of the American League division series. They will face the Tampa Bay Rays for the American League pennant. W.N.B.A.: The Golden State Valkyries advanced to the finals for the first time after beating the Las Vegas Aces, 87-77. College football: Texas, the No. 1 team in the country, lost, 24-27, to Oklahoma.
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