Chinese leader Xi Jinping is writing a new social contract with the promise of a perfectly engineered society: one in which AI companies work with police to track down fugitives, find abducted children and publicly shame jaywalkers; in which public services, rewards for good deeds and punishments for misbehavior are all delivered with mathematical precision and efficiency.

Rather than entice citizens with the possibility of riches, Mr. Xi offers them a predictable world in which thousands of algorithms neutralize threats and sand away frictions.

Under Mr. Xi, the government has seeped into every aspect of citizens’ lives, censoring social media and using data to target protesters and individuals it deems threatening to the social order. But a recent explosion of protests against the government’s zero-Covid controls suggests there may be limits to how far he can push.

Josh Chin is deputy bureau chief for politics and general news in the WSJ’s China bureau. Liza Lin covers Asia technology news for the WSJ, focusing mostly on China and the internet.

We tapped our combined more than 25 years of experience living in and reporting on China to write Surveillance State: Inside China’s Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control.

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