The cognitive and emotional weight of surveillance is a heavy burden to Chinese citizens, says Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, Canada Research Chair in Digital Regulation at Work and in Life at the University of Québec in Montréal.

“The way the Chinese citizens I spoke to experience digital surveillance is characterized by strong psychic tensions,” she says.

“The same persons who support surveillance as being indispensable in the Chinese context are also and nevertheless expressing the heavy burden that coping with such exposure places on them.”

This weight is both cognitive, as evidenced by the range of self-protective mental tactics to dissociate oneself from surveillance, and emotional, as conveyed in participants’ strong emotions and particularly telling body language, Ollier-Malaterre adds.