REC:in:China - Gamebook
REC:in:China is a work of fiction based on real facts.
It’s a game-book about the Chinese mass surveillance system: the story is set in the Xinjiang
Autonomous Region and
it focuses on the discrimination policy against the Uighurs (the Chinese Muslim minority), resident
in the
North-West of the country.
REC:in:China - Book cover
The gamebook was a popular literary genre in the 1980s, especially for fantasy books: it is a narrative work that presents a linear story with a series of options at the end of each page. In REC the reader can create a personal narration by choosing among three characters: a Uighur farmer, an American journalist, or a Chinese politician. Depending on the decisions taken, it is possible to find out how the behavior is going to be evaluated by the People's Republic of China party.
It is known how Beijing’s government employs artificial intelligence technologies to profile the population, eliminating the concept of privacy to guarantee national security. Closed-circuit cameras, facial, voice/biometric recognition, online censorship, and control of social media: these are the measures already implemented to evaluate the actions of residents and tourists, with severe social, political, and economic consequences.
In the case of the Uighurs, more repressive measures have been taken. Following an increase of protests and tensions between ethnic Muslim Chinese and Han (the majority group), the Chinese Communist Party secretary Chen Quanguo adopted a de-extremification policy in 2016, with the excuse of limiting the infiltration of possible Islamic terrorist organizations. The anti-religious campaign is still ongoing: not only the Uighurs but also other ethnic minorities present in the country now live in constant fear of being locked up in re-education camps, without any warning or the possibility of contacting their families. These are places of detention where daily life is marked by forced labor and brainwashing techniques based on communist propaganda. This policy has been condemned by international public opinion, but the Chinese government has always denied the existence of these facilities, officially recognized as "Education and Vocational Training Centres".
Every event in the book is, therefore, based on documented facts. The media sources used for the narration have been collected in an index at the end of the book. There are three characters to play and nine endings to find: take your pick.
The book features images and illustrations designed to resemble comic books.
Academic project
Design Academy Eindhoven
Year
2019
Featured on
Ossomagazine, 2020 ↗