MixedThe New StatesmanGriffiths’s strengths are as a reporter: he has an eye for character and writes with impartial rigour. But although he effectively details how China built its alternative internet, he fails to address some of the deeper questions its panopticon poses. The meaning of privacy and freedom – for Chinese citizens living with an authoritarian internet regime, or for citizens elsewhere under surveillance capitalism – is left unexplored ... In a cursory epilogue, Griffiths writes that the path beyond Silicon Valley’s hollow libertarianism or China’s state censorship is a publicly owned internet freed from \'the pursuit of profit or top-down control\'. In an age where life is increasingly conducted online, his conclusion feels more urgent than ever.