In China, Xi Jinping’s Regime Leads a Merciless and Endless Hunt for Protesters.
Facial recognition, phone searches ... The CCP's security apparatus is looking for participants in the anti-zero-COVID mobilization.
“All my conversations about the protests have been deleted on my WeChat account,” says a stunned Beijing woman who participated in a rally in the Chinese capital against Xi Jinping's zero-COVID policy at the end of November 2022, which has just been relaxed by the government. “I knew that our conversations and posts were monitored and that publications could be censored, but I didn't imagine that it was possible to delete our private messages remotely!”
Days after an unprecedented protest movement spread across several major cities in China, the CCP security apparatus regained control. The authorities have cleared the air both on the streets - where police patrols are omnipresent - and on social networks.
On the subway, officers are going so far as to check cell phones to remove photos and videos of the protests and to verify that apps banned in China, like Telegram or Instagram, have not been installed. Police officers are also hunting down VPNs, software that is used to bypass internet censorship.
For now, only a few arrests have been visible, at the very scene of the protests that called for Xi Jinping's resignation. But the authoritarian communist regime will likely act discreetly to find, arrest and punish the leaders, as it did after the massive protest movement in Hong Kong in 2019.
China can rely on its arsenal of technological surveillance tools to do this. “I've been contacted by about 15 people who have been summoned by the local police,” confides Wang Shengsheng, a Shenzhen-based lawyer who offers free legal advice to protesters. “These people say they have received calls from the police claiming to know where they were during the protests and asking them to come in for questioning.”
He added: “I suspect the police are using cell phone data and social media accounts to track down protesters. In some cities, it appears that they have relied on surveillance footage and facial recognition.”
It must be said that China is massively gridded: according to a report by consulting firm IHS Markit, China had 540 million CCTV cameras in 2021 or 54% of the global total.
“The Chinese have known for a long time that they are followed by the most sophisticated electronic surveillance system in the world. The coronavirus crisis has brought some of this technology out of the shadows, providing authorities with a justification for radical methods of digital social control,” says Josh Chin, author of the book “Surveillance State: Inside China's Quest to Launch a New Era of Social Control,” who expects elements of the COVID-19 monitoring system - such as QR codes for tracking movements - to be integrated into the police apparatus in the future.
For their part, some companies specializing in artificial intelligence and security cameras even claim to be able to recognize masked faces and alert the Chinese authorities.
“Since Xi Jinping came to power a decade ago, the government's use of technology to enhance its surveillance capabilities has become more and more widespread,” says Claire Seungeun Lee, a law professor at the University of Massachusetts in America. In addition, all the new technological applications such as ordering an Uber-like VTC (Didi in China), buying a train ticket, or products online offer the Chinese state very powerful monitoring tools.
The COVID-19 epidemic has accelerated the phenomenon. “The government is taking advantage of this crisis. It is a very good pretext to control the whole population, which remains the obsession of the regime. And to know everything about us: to collect our personal data, to know exactly the places we frequent ...” sighs a Beijing woman, exasperated by the decline of freedom.
“China is using the digitalization of the world to achieve a perfect dictatorship,” according to several sinologists. The demonstrators who dared to challenge the president for life Xi Jinping by calling for his resignation in recent weeks could soon pay the price.
Some reading
Following Xi Jinping’s Sudden Turnaround, China Is Now Facing a Sudden Spike in COVID Cases. This severe outbreak could cause up to 2.1 million deaths in the coming weeks.
Millions of iPhones Will Be Missing This Christmas — How Xi Jinping’s Zero-COVID Strategy Put a Third of Apple’s Annual Revenue at Risk. The Cupertino giant has a lot to look forward to, but we can better understand Tim Cook’s desire to shift part of the production to India in the future.
Poor Countries Increasingly Indebted to Beijing, and Therefore Prisoners of Xi Jinping and the CCP. The debt service of the poorest countries is set to grow dangerously, warns the World Bank. The restructuring of this debt requires an active role from China.
Xi Jinping’s Zero-COVID Strategy in China Has Highlighted More Than Ever the Ineffectiveness of Autocratic Regimes. The alleged superiority of Xi Jinping’s model of governance in dealing with COVID was just smoke and mirrors.
Is China an Overrated Superpower? Economically, geopolitically, demographically, and militarily, the Middle Kingdom is showing increasingly visible signs of fragility.