Chinese police accuse billboard on side of a bus of jaywalking
POLICE in China have admitted to wrongly shaming a leading businesswoman after a facial recognition system designed to catch jaywalkers mistook an advert on the side of a bus for her actual face.
Dong Mingzhu, president of China’s biggest maker of air conditioning systems, had her image placed on a public display screen in Ningbo, near Shanghai, with a caption saying she had crossed the street on a red light.
But Ningbo’s facial recognition cameras had in fact captured her image on a passing bus – a fact quickly spotted by citizens who used the Weibo social network to share pictures of the alert.
One user mockingly wrote: “Who is that person clinging on to the bus? Serious warning!”
Ningbo traffic police admitted their mistake. They said the alert had been “immediately deleted afterwards” and technicians had “completely upgraded the system to reduce the false recognition rate”.
The incident highlights China’s growing use of automated systems such as facial recognition cameras to catch petty criminals, as well as in a campaign of repression against Muslims in western Xinjiang province.
Authorities in Ningbo recently boasted that cameras installed at six intersections had detected more than 7,800 cases of jaywalking. The industrial centre of Shenzhen claims to have shamed 14,000 offenders in 10 months at one intersection alone.
According to IHS Markit, the research firm, the number of surveillance cameras in China may climb from 170million to 450million by 2020.
Ms Dong is well-known in China as a tough female entrepreneur and single mother who rose from working-class roots and who claims not to have used a day of her holiday allowance in 26 years.
Her autobiography, published in 2006 and later made into a television series, was titled Regretless Pursuit, and one male competitor reportedly said of her: “Where sister Dong walks, no grass grows.”
In interviews, Ms Dong has said she regrets not spending more time with her son while he was growing up, but said she did not remarry after her husband died in 1984 because it would have compromised her independence.
Her company, Gree Electric Appliances, issued a statement thanking Ningbo’s traffic police for their hard work and calling on people to obey traffic rules.