NR | 1h 37m | Documentary | 2023
In China, the question isn’t whether “Big Brother” is watching. It is: What is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) going to do about what it sees? Yes, you will find public security cameras in every major city around the world. What sets apart the surveillance systems in mainland China isn’t the omnipresence of its monitoring, but the degree to which surveillance has been integrated into a truly dystopian program of social control.
You could ask Chang Weiping about that, but he is still in prison. Instead, viewers watch his wife, Chen Zijuan, valiantly campaigning for his release even though her every move is blocked in advance, likely thanks to CCP surveillance. Zhang Jialing follows Ms. Chen and a handful of other Chinese dissidents as they all endure state surveillance and the harassment it facilitates in the revelatory documentary “Total Trust.”
Mr. Chang was swept up in Xi Jinping’s so-called 709 Crackdown, which decimated the ranks of lawyers willing to represent petitioners and human rights cases. After several years in prison, he is finally facing trial on vague, catch-all charges. Before his arrest, Mr. Chang represented journalist Sophie Xueqin Huang, when she was sued over a series of sexual harassment stories. Now, she is trying to help Ms. Chen publicize her former attorney’s case.
Cameras Everywhere
You can’t call Ms. Chen, Ms. Huang, and Mr. Wang paranoid, because Ms. Zhang shows viewers the uncamouflaged cameras blatantly installed in the hallways and stairwells of their buildings. This is a level of surveillance you might expect in a maximum-security penitentiary. They clearly aren’t just there for show, because whenever Mr. Wang and Ms. Li try to leave for a human rights panel at an international embassy, the local “block captain” summons a group of thugs to barricade them inside their flat.Indeed, it’s the application of surveillance that makes “Total Trust” such a frightening exposé. For instance, the state security complex switches the results of Ms. Chen’s latest negative COVID-19 test, preventing her from entering a florist shop to buy flowers to bring to her husband’s trial. Ms. Zhang connects the dots between the physical surveillance in dissidents’ apartment buildings (both cameras and human eyes) and the public health, police, and highway patrol authorities, as well as the controversial social credit system. All these systems are integrated and weaponized against dissent.
In fact, the social credit system emerges as one of the most nefarious instruments of control, because it’s largely reliant on block captains or neighborhood snitches, whom Ms. Zhang’s cameras film measuring minor infractions, such as the distance a car might be parked from the curb. These petty informers might sound like a mere nuisance, but significant demerits can affect which school a parent’s children can attend. Of course, petitioning the government for redress automatically results in social credit penalties.
Police State
Ms. Zhang clearly establishes the potential dangers to civil liberties when busybody CCP enforcers work in conjunction with cutting-edge technology. The elevator pitch for “Total Trust” is that it uncovers the intrusiveness of Chinese state-sponsored surveillance, but it’s more than that. It reveals the entire ecosystem of oppression and misery that surveillance makes possible. She also clearly documents the resulting pain, especially for Mr. Chang’s young son, who desperately misses his father.
Throughout “Total Trust,” the human costs of the CCP’s policies of social control are inescapable. (It’s worth noting that Ms. Zhang doesn’t even touch on conditions in Xinjiang, where AI-augmented surveillance racially differentiates between the privileged Han Chinese and the ethnic Uyghurs, who are systemically discriminated against.)
Regardless, this is an eye-opening film that captures real, heartbreaking family drama. It’s very highly recommended.
