State-of-the-art security cameras, ultra-reliable DNA testing technology, facial recognition software… At a forum this week, China showcased its surveillance prowess, determined to export it around the world.
Representatives of law enforcement agencies from around a hundred countries took part in the Global Forum on Public Security Cooperation, held in Lianyungang (east): on the menu, demonstrations by dozens of Chinese companies, many of which are linked to the repression denounced by NGOs in the Xinjiang region.
China is one of the most surveilled societies on the planet, with millions of cameras installed on its streets and a facial recognition system widely used across its territory.
This surveillance network fulfills a dual function: to fight crime, on the one hand, but also to prevent any possible challenge to the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Opening the forum, Public Security Minister Wang Xiaohong pointed out that over the past year, the Chinese police have trained 2,700 officers from abroad.
Over the next 12 months, it plans to do so for another 3,000.
This is “clearly a sign that China wants to export” its policing and surveillance techniques, says Bethany Allen, an expert at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
“Beijing hopes to normalize and legitimize its style of policing and […] the authoritarian political system in which it operates,” she adds.
“Rapid target location”
And “the more countries there are to learn from the Chinese model, the fewer countries there will be willing to criticize such a state-first, repressive approach.”
In the aisles, Chinese companies proudly display their law enforcement tools.
One of them, Caltta Technologies, is helping Mozambique set up an “incident response platform”, using “big data” to enable the “rapid location of a target”.
Telecoms giant Huawei says it has deployed its “Public Safety Solution” in more than 100 countries and regions, including Kenya and Saudi Arabia.
Huawei has been sanctioned by the United States since 2019, which accuses it of being able to spy for the Chinese authorities.
SDIC Intelligence Xiamen Information (formerly Meiya Pico) was also sanctioned by Washington for developing an application “intended to track sound and image files, location data and messages on […] mobile phones”.
In 2018, the US Treasury said that residents of Xinjiang “were required to download a desktop version of” the app “to allow authorities to monitor illegal activity.”
China has been accused of incarcerating more than a million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, something it has consistently denied.
At the company’s booth, representatives show off highly advanced facial recognition tools that can sharpen blurry images to better identify suspects.
“If you have a fugitive,” the restoration software “even shows if there is a gap between his teeth,” one of them says happily.
Another exhibitor, the Institute of Forensic Medicine of the Ministry of Public Security, is unveiling high-tech equipment for DNA testing.
“Learning from China”
This institute was also sanctioned in 2020 by the United States, which cut off its access to certain American technologies, considering it “complicit in violations and abuses of human rights”.
A sanction since lifted, as part of cooperation efforts between Beijing and Washington to combat fentanyl trafficking.
At the Lianyungang forum, several foreign delegations interviewed by AFP were enthusiastic.
“We can learn from China,” says Sydney Gabela, a major general in the South African police, who wants to “see the new technologies that have come out, so that we can deploy them in South Africa.”
“We came to establish contacts and start training,” says Colonel Galo Erazo of the Ecuadorian police. So “either Chinese police will go to Ecuador or Ecuadorian police will come to China.”
A way for Beijing to extend its aura in the world, underlines Sheena Greitens, an expert from the University of Texas.
“Training and advising police departments is an increasingly popular way for China to exert influence and shape its security environment abroad,” she observes.
Which, incidentally, provides some valuable information on “how local security forces – often deployed on the periphery of China or in regions that Beijing considers strategically important – perceive the security environment.”
“These initiatives can give China leverage within the security apparatus in the event of a threat to Chinese interests.”