China ensnared in a web of high-tech spyware
President Xi’s social credit system has been called ‘a futuristic vision of Big Brother out of control’
There is hardly a single aspect of life in China that escapes the state-sponsored net of surveillance.
Fueled by Big Brother Xi Jinping’s obsession to “control” everything, an all-encompassing spider web of high-tech spyware has been constructed, backed up by massive government databases.
Freedom of thought is not an option.
At the heart of President Xi’s strategy is the Frankenstein project known as China’s “social credit system,” an Orwellian program designed to monitor and then rate the country’s more than 1.1 billion adult population.
Human Rights Watch has called it “chilling.” Others have labeled it “a futuristic vision of Big Brother out of control,” the Insider reported last year.
Against this backdrop of social profiling, Zhang Jun’s comments earlier this week at the United Nations Security Council’s technology and security briefing were laughable.
“It is worrisome that some governments have politicized issues of scientific and technological nature, generalized the concept of national security [and] abused state power,” China’s permanent representative to the UN said as reported by state-run Global Times, referring, of course, to the United States and its European and Asian allies.
Separating fact from fiction:
- State media claims that China’s SkyNet is the largest video surveillance system in the world.
- It uses facial recognition technology and big data analysis.
- Comparitech revealed in 2019 that eight out of the 10 most monitored cities in the world were in China.
- The top three were Chongqing, Shenzhen and Shanghai.
- A leaked treasure trove of data this week has shown the extent of Beijing’s high-tech suppression of Uighur Muslims under its SkyNet surveillance program.
- The UN has confirmed that 1.5 million ethnic minorities have been detained in Xinjiang internment camps.
- But SkyNet reaches far beyond China’s borders.
Meddling with society is in the Chinese Communist Party’s DNA.
Michael Schuman, of the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub
Delve deeper: Beijing’s draconian surveillance protocol makes a mockery of Xi’s tedious “opening up” policy. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, the ruling Communist Party had launched a country-wide tech crackdown as it consolidated its power in the age of the Internet of Things.
Doublespeak: Not that you would know that from the remarks made by Zhang, China’s permanent representative to the UN.
What he said: “It is necessary to curb the abuse of information technology, cyber-surveillance, cyber-attacks, and of the arms race in cyberspace.”
Are you serious? That is rich coming from Zhang and a country that has the dubious distinction of ticking all those boxes.
Big picture: State control is the bedrock of Xi’s reign and the doctrine of the Party. Cyber-attacks are part of the plan.
Geopolitical genetics: “Meddling with society is in the Chinese Communist Party’s DNA,” Michael Schuman, of the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, wrote in a commentary entitled, Xi Jinping’s Terrifying New China, for The Atlantic back in November.
China Factor comment: Round-the-clock, high-tech surveillance has become a way of life in the world’s second-largest economy. China’s “zero-Covid” policy and city-wide lockdowns have simply illustrated the depth of the program.