Normalizing a repressive approach: China's police state goes global at surveillance conference
cross-posted from: feddit.org/post/2927437
High-tech CCTV, super-accurate DNA-testing technology and facial tracking software: China is pushing its state-of-the-art surveillance and policing tactics abroad.
Delegates from law enforcement across the world descended this week on a port city in eastern China showcasing the work of dozens of local firms, several linked to repression in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
China is one of the most surveilled societies on Earth, with millions of CCTV cameras scattered across cities and facial recognition technology widely used in everything from day-to-day law enforcement to political repression.
Its police serve a dual purpose: keeping the peace and cracking down on petty crime while also ensuring challenges to the ruling Communist Party are swiftly stamped out.
During the opening ceremony in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, China’s police minister lauded Beijing’s training of thousands of police from abroad over the last 12 months – and promised to help thousands more over the next year.
An analyst said this was “absolutely a sign that China aims to export” its policing.
“Beijing is hoping to normalise and legitimise its policing style and… the authoritarian political system in which it operates,” Bethany Allen at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said.
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“The more countries that learn from the Chinese model, the fewer countries willing to criticise such a state-first, repressive approach.”
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Tech giant Huawei said its “Public Safety Solution” was now in use in over 100 countries and regions, from Kenya to Saudi Arabia.
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The United States sanctioned SDIC Intelligence Xiamen Information, formerly Meiya Pico, for developing an app “designed to track image and audio files, location data, and messages on… cellphones”.
In 2018, the US Treasury said residents of Xinjiang “were required to download a desktop version of” that app “so authorities could monitor for illicit activity”.
China has been accused of incarcerating more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang – charges Beijing vehemently rejects.
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Several delegations expressed interest in learning from the Chinese police.
“We have come to establish links and begin training,” Colonel Galo Erazo from the National Police of Ecuador told AFP.
“Either Chinese police will go to Ecuador, or Ecuadorian police will come to China,” he added.
One expert said that this outsourcing of security is becoming a key tool in China’s efforts to promote its goals overseas.
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“China’s offers of police cooperation and training give them channels through which to learn how local security forces – many either on China’s periphery or in areas that Beijing considers strategically important – view the security environment,” [Sheena Greitens at the University of Texas in the U.S.] said.
“These initiatives can give China influence within the security apparatus if a threat to Chinese interests arises.”
[Corrected broken link.]