China is many things: an economic giant, a rising power in Asia and beyond, and a potential geopolitical rival to the United States. But it is also what might be called the world’s first high-tech autocracy, deploying state-of-the-art technology to monitor increasingly large aspects of its citizens' lives. What are the future prospects for individual freedom in China? Will China’s high-tech approach to social control spread to other countries?

In this episode, Steve Lewis, the C.V. Starr Transnational China Fellow at the Baker Institute, discusses how the Chinese government has implemented technology to monitor Chinese citizens, and the implications of these efforts for these citizens around the globe.