'one of the year’s most exciting releases' - The Herald

China is building the world’s first digital totalitarian state, a system of hitherto unimaginable social and political control. Internet freedom has been eliminated and ubiquitous surveillance cameras employ the latest facial recognition technology.

Through flagrant cyber espionage, it has plundered Western technology on a massive scale, bullied Western tech companies and academics (though many have been willing accomplices) and intimidated critics worldwide. In doing so, it has become a model for aspiring dictators everywhere.

Ian Williams examines the extraordinary rise of the Chinese surveillance state, showing how it has been driven by the enigmatic Xi Jinping, now effectively president for life, and how it impacts the daily lives of Chinese citizens, particularly dissidents and those from ethnic minorities. Supporting interviews and first-hand accounts from those whose lives have been turned upside down or worse highlight the chilling and ruthless efficiency with which the government can now act.

The book also considers the wider implications for the rest of the world. How to deal with an increasingly strident, aggressive Beijing is one of the biggest challenges facing the West in what has become a technological Cold War.

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'Forget Soviet Russia, Xi’s China now echoes 1930s Germany'

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'Fascinating… a really interesting book. China has no private companies… you are always dealing with the Chinese Communist State whenever you deal with them. An unarguable fact'

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'Williams knows his stuff, as an award-winning foreign correspondent reporting for a quarter of a century from Asia with a special interest in China. This is an accessible, valuable, troubling, timely book'

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'one of the year's most exciting releases'

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'I have been reading a superb new book by the journalist Ian Williams called Every Breath You Take: China's New Tyranny. The title comes from the 1982 hit song by the band known as The Police, written by its frontman Sting, who later described it as "a nasty little song. Rather evil. It's about jealousy and surveillance and ownership." It refers to "every move you make … I’ll be watching you." A stalker, not a lover; an oppressor, not a partner. In every sense, the CCP regime. Yet not only watching you. Now, in Hong Kong, lecturing you every day'

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'A devastating exposé'

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'A persuasive, alarming wake-up call'