China's Student Informant System

     When I first came across this article I felt certain that it was fake and as I came across more articles on the matter I just felt such disbelief. After the Tienanmen Square protests in 1989, the Chinese Communist Party officials recruited a group of student informants to surveil fellow students and professors who show any deviating behavior, including expressions that go against political stability. Any student or professor who is caught showing signs of rebellion toward the current political structure could be subject to harsh repercussions. According to the CIA report on the Student Informant System,

Students have had their scholarships revoked and their academic records penalized because of information provided by student informants that is sometimes highly subjective, such as facial expressions (CIA, 2010).

     This is what I find extremely bothersome, how can someone so hastily penalize a student or professor for supposedly making a facial expression that shows displeasure toward a political structure? How does one even make that call to potentially ruin a students education over a facial expression? The CIA report goes on explain their techniques for monitoring students and professors; 

The SIS employs traditional political spying and denunciation techniques, seeking to create a ‘white terror’ environment on campus — in which students and teachers fear surveillance more than arrest — to achieve and maintain influence and control (CIA, 2010).

This is an extreme example of the Panopticon, in which students and professors cannot verify that they are being surveilled by student informants on campus at all times but must always think they are so they keep themselves disciplined and self-regulate as to not express any unconventional political views. Student informants report all unconventional political activity or expression to the Academic Affairs department who then denounce students and professors for deviating. 

Michel Foucault insisted that power is decentralized, meaning power does not come from one source but that it can be dispersed, fragmented, decentralized, omnipresent and therefore invisible (Foucault, 1975). The Chinese Communist Party in this case is the centralized power in which they are the institution that created the Student Informant System and the rules that apply. They also employ and disperse power to the student informants to enforce this system and to monitor the students and professors for them, which gets reported back to the Academic Affairs Department who end up deciding whether or not to penalize. The students and professors are always aware of this centralized power and will self-regulate their behaviors as to avoid getting penalized. Having the student informants visible, the students and professors must always be aware that the centralized power is watching them so they can self-regulate and maintain political stability on campus as to not get penalized. Having the power to be able to discipline and self-regulate themselves, the power is then disbursed from the student informants and decentralized to the students and professors.  

References

CIA Open Source Works, (2010). China: Student informant system to expand, limiting school autonomy, free expression

Foucault , M. (1975). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison .