Bar codes are an everyday part of modern life. No supermarket could function without them. In Kashgar, an ancient city in northwest China, however, these digital symbols have a deeply sinister significance.
A brave Chinese journalist, whom we will call Li, was in Kashgar undercover earlier this year when he spotted a strange sight, a square “QR” bar code on the front door of a house. Other homes on the street were marked in the same way. Li watched nervously as a Chinese police patrol used a device to scan one of them.
Every hundred yards or so along the street, he spotted a gantry with a large, sophisticated surveillance camera. A police checkpoint came into view, one of thousands in the city. Men and