By LifeSiteNews (Politics) | Created at 2024-09-27 16:37:38 | Updated at 2024-09-30 05:21:42
2 days ago
Fri Sep 27, 2024 - 11:58 am EDT
(LifeSiteNews) –– 45 Chinese firms have showcased their latest police-state products and technologies, including state-of-the-art CCTV, precise DNA-testing technology and intrusive facial tracking software, at the inaugural Public Security Tech Expo in Lianyungang, located in China’s Jiangsu province.
Hosted by China’s First Research Institute of the Ministry of Public Security, the 6-day tech expo which began on September 7 showed off advanced technologies in the domains of “criminal technology, police protective equipment, traffic management equipment, anti-terrorism rescue, and command and communication,” according to the forum’s website.
The website’s official description says “the main purpose of holding the Public Security Tech Expo (Lianyungang) under the framework of the Forum is to deepen technical exchanges and international cooperation in the field of public security science and technology equipment, share useful experience in the application of science and technology equipment to public security practice, and jointly improve the ability and level of maintaining public security.”
One firm participating in the expo, Caltta Technologies, featured a project aimed at “helping” the southern African nation of Mozambique establish an “Incident Response Platform,” extolling its abilities to harness data in “rapid target location.”
Tech giant Huawei was also at the expo, boasting that its “Public Safety Solution” is currently used in more than 100 countries and regions, from Kenya to Saudi Arabia. The United States sanctioned Huawei in 2019, castigating the firm as “an arm” of the Chinese surveillance state.
The expo also saw China’s Ministry of Public Security’s Institute of Forensic Science show off its new high-tech DNA testing technologies. In 2020, Washington banned the institute from accessing some U.S. technology after a number of Chinese firms decried the institute as being “complicit in human rights violations and abuses.”
In 2018, the U.S. Treasury stated that residents of Xinjiang “were required to download a desktop version” of the app “so authorities could monitor for illicit activity.”
Communist China has been slammed for jailing over one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang – claims Beijing vehemently denies. Nonetheless, critics have pointed out how China’s surveillance technologies have been used to draconically suppress dissidents in the Xinjiang province.
During the expo’s opening ceremony, China’s police minister praised Beijing for training thousands of overseas police officers this past year – and pledged to aid in the training of thousands more over the coming year.
Reacting to these disturbing developments, especially China’s activity abroad, Bethany Allen at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said, “Beijing is hoping to normalize and legitimize its policing style and… the authoritarian political system in which it operates.”
According to UCA News, “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.”
The same UCA News article added:
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.
Notably, various foreign police officers said they hoped to use Chinese surveillance technology to police their own countries.
“We can learn from China,” said Sydney Gabela, a major general in the South African police service, according to UCA News.
“We wanted to check out the new technologies that are coming out so that we can deploy them in South Africa,” Gabela said.
China’s notoriety for being a highly-surveilled state goes back a long way. In 2023, The Economist ran an article detailing how the prevalence of CCTV cameras in Communist China, many bedecked with facial-recognition technology, “leave criminals with nowhere to hide.” A September 2019 report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) also disclosed that “the Chinese government has increasingly employed advanced technology to amplify its repression of religious and faith communities.”
The executive summary of the same USCIRF report stated:
Authorities have installed surveillance cameras both outside and inside houses of worship to monitor and identify attendees. The government has deployed facial recognition systems that are purportedly able to distinguish Uighurs and Tibetans from other ethnic groups. Chinese authorities have also collected biometric information—including blood samples, voice recordings, and fingerprints—from religious and faith communities, often without their consent. The government uses advanced computing platforms and artificial intelligence to collate and recognize patterns in the data on religious and faith communities. Chinese technology companies have aided the government’s crackdown on religion and belief by supplying advanced hardware and computing systems to government agencies.
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