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China has established the most extensive surveillance network in the world, deploying countless cameras throughout the nation.
Some of these cameras have the ability to rotate, providing comprehensive views of public spaces, while others focus on reading license plates to enable police to monitor vehicles in real-time.
As night falls, these cameras illuminate cities across China, casting light into alleys and shadowy corners.
In recent decades, the Chinese government has initiated several advanced surveillance programs to ensure nationwide oversight, including initiatives like “Sky Net” and “Golden Shield.”
The newest initiative, known as the “Xueliang Project” or Sharp Eyes, draws inspiration from Mao Zedong’s words, who famously stated, “the people have sharp eyes,” encouraging citizens to identify those opposing socialist principles.
AP investigations have found that American companies to a large degree designed and built China’s surveillance state, playing a far greater role in enabling human rights abuses than previously known.
The US government repeatedly allowed and even actively helped American firms to sell technology to the Chinese police, government and surveillance companies, AP found.
The cameras studding China are knitted together in policing systems that allow authorities to track and control virtually anyone in the country, often targeting perceived threats to the state like dissidents, religious believers or ethnic minorities.
Following directives from Beijing to ensure “100 per cent coverage” in key public areas, authorities have installed facial-recognition cameras across the country, including in unlikely locations, such as ski slopes, beaches, remote country roads and The Great Wall of China.
A slew of cameras greets visitors to Beijing, with a screen underneath announcing: “Amazing China travel starts here!”
At times, entire neighbourhoods have been demolished and rebuilt in part to make it easier for cameras to keep watch.
The historic quarter of Xinjiang’s ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar, once a maze-like warren of twisting alleys, was demolished and rebuilt with wider avenues and thousands of camera that light up at night.
China’s cities, roads and villages are now studded with more cameras than the rest of the world combined, analysts say – roughly one for every two people.
The goal is clear, according to authorities: Total surveillance in every corner of the country, with “no blind spots” to be found.