In China, Big Brother sees all
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, SHAME AND LOTS OF CAMERAS CONTROL THE PEOPLE
In Zhengzhou, a police officer wearing facial recognition glasses spotted a heroin smuggler at a train station. In Qingdao, a city famous for its German colonial heritage, cameras powered by artificial intelligence helped police snatch two dozen criminal suspects in the midst of a big annual beer festival.
In Wuhu, a fugitive murder suspect was identified by a camera as he bought food from a street vendor.
With millions of cameras and billions of lines of code, China is building a high-tech authoritarian future. Beijing is embracing technologies like facial recognition and artificial intelligence to identify and track 1.4 billion people. It wants to assemble a vast and unprecedented national surveillance system, with crucial help from its thriving technology industry.
“In the past, it was all about instinct,” said Shan Jun, deputy chief of the police at the railway station in Zhengzhou, where the heroin smuggler was caught. “If you missed something, you missed it.”
China is reversing the commonly held vision of technology as a great democratizer, bringing people more freedom and connecting them to the world.
In China, it has brought control.
In some cities, cameras scan train stations for China’s most wanted. Billboard-sized displays show the faces of jaywalkers and list the names of people who can’t pay their debts. Facial recognition scanners guard the entrances to housing complexes. Already, China has an estimated 200 million surveillance cameras — four times as many as the United States.
Such efforts supplement other systems that track internet use and communications, hotel stays, train and plane trips and even car travel in some places.
Chinese authorities regularly state, and overstate, their capabilities. In China, even the perception of surveillance can keep the public in line.
Some places are further along than others. Invasive mass-surveillance software has been set up in the west to track members of the Uighur Muslim minority and map their relations with friends and family, according to software viewed by The New York Times.
“This is potentially a totally new way for the government to manage the economy and society,” said Martin Chorzempa, a fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
“The goal is algorithmic governance,” he added.
The intersection south of Changhong Bridge in the city of Xiangyang used to be a nightmare. Cars drove fast and jaywalkers darted into the street.
Then last summer, police put up cameras linked to facial recognition technology and a big, outdoor screen. Photos of lawbreakers were displayed alongside their name and government ID number. People were initially excited to see their faces on the board, said Guan Yue, a spokeswoman, until propaganda outlets told them it was punishment.
“If you are captured by the system and you don’t see it, your neighbours or colleagues will, and they will gossip about it,” she said. “That’s too embarrassing for people to take.”
China’s new surveillance is based on an old idea: Only strong authority can bring order to a turbulent country. Mao Zedong took that philosophy to devastating ends, as his top-down rule brought famine and then the Cultural Revolution.
His successors also craved order but feared the consequences of totalitarian rule. They formed a new understanding with the Chinese people. In exchange for political impotence, they would be mostly left alone and allowed to get rich.
It worked. Censorship and police powers remained strong, but China’s people still found more freedom. That new attitude helped usher in decades of breakneck economic growth.
Today, that unwritten agreement is breaking down.
China’s economy is not growing at the same pace. It suffers from a severe wealth gap. After four decades of fatter paycheques and better living, its people have higher expectations.
Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, has moved to solidify his power. Changes to Chinese law mean he could rule longer than any leader since Mao. And he has undertaken a broad corruption crackdown that could make him plenty of enemies.
For support, he has turned to the Mao-era beliefs in the importance of a cult of personality and the role of the Communist Party in everyday life. Technology gives him the power to make it happen.
Xi has launched a major upgrade of the Chinese surveillance state. China has become the world’s biggest market for security and surveillance technology, with analysts estimating the country will have almost 300 million cameras installed by 2020. Chinese buyers will snap up more than three-quarters of all servers designed to scan video footage for faces, predicts IHS Markit, a research firm.
Startups often make a point of insisting their employees use their technology. In Shanghai, a company called Yitu has taken that to the extreme.
The halls of its offices are dotted with cameras, looking for faces. From desk to break room to exit, employees’ paths are traced on a television screen with blue dotted lines. The monitor shows their comings and goings, all day, every day.
A technology boom in China is helping the government’s surveillance ambitions. In sheer scale and investment, China already rivals Silicon Valley.
At a building complex in Xiangyang, a facial-recognition system set up to let residents quickly through security gates adds to the police collection of photos of local residents, according to local Chinese Communist Party officials.
Wen Yangli, an executive at Number 1 Community, which makes the product, said the company is at work on other applications. One would detect when crowds of people are clashing. Another would allow police to use virtual maps of buildings to find out who lives where.
For technology to be effective, it does not always have to work. Take China’s facial-recognition glasses.
Police in Zhengzhou recently showed off the specs at a highspeed rail station for state media and others. They snapped photos of a policewoman peering from behind the shaded lenses.
But the glasses work only if the target stands still for several seconds. They have been used mostly to check travellers for fake identifications.
China’s national database of individuals it has flagged for watching — including suspected terrorists, criminals, drug traffickers, political activists and others — includes 20 million to 30 million people, said one technology executive. That is too many people for today’s facial recognition technology to parse, said the executive.
Still, Chinese authorities who are generally mum about security have embarked on a campaign to convince the country’s people that the high-tech security state is already in place.
In many places, it works. At the intersection in Xiangyang, jaywalking has decreased. At the building complex where Number 1 Community’s facial-recognition gate system has been installed, a problem with bike theft ceased entirely.
“The whole point is that people don’t know if they’re being monitored, and that uncertainty makes people more obedient,” said Chorzempa, the Peterson Institute fellow.
He described the approach as a panopticon, the idea that people will follow the rules precisely because they do not know whether they are being watched.