ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book responds to the critical oversight by exploring surveillance as it shapes and is portrayed in Asian cinema, from a variety of geographical spaces and across an expansive historical survey. The book by Xiaoning Lu and Man-Fung Yip documents this process as it took place on both sides of the Hong Kong–China border. Cold Eyes' lateral adaptation from one place on the Asian surveillance archipelago to another further underscores the distinct and yet globally relevant implications of surveillance cinema in Asia. The book collectively portrays the ways in which the cinematic medium is uniquely capable of commenting upon surveillance theory and practice. The book concludes CCTV-based plots and imagery to show how China's reinvention as one of the world's most accelerated economies manifests in a displacement of official Communist political surveillance by peer-to-peer technological voyeurism.
