Surveillance within, threats without

The latest China-related news reveals that Beijing is tightening control over not only China’s citizens, but over its public image overseas—with threats aimed at those who dare criticize the government.

Inside the country, China is rolling out a program that would require new cars to have radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips installed on the windshield, providing information on the vehicles as they pass reading devices on the sides of the road, according to The Wall Street Journal. The government claims the purpose of the chips is to study traffic congestion on roads in order to reduce pollution, but given China’s growing surveillance program, the system would likely be used to monitor citizens.

The government claims the purpose of the chips is to study traffic congestion on roads in order to reduce pollution, but the system would likely be used to monitor citizens.

The program, mandatory for all new vehicles starting in 2019, is the latest step towards China’s goal of tracking all its citizens. Already, a network of surveillance cameras with facial recognition software blanket China’s cities and feed information to the centralized “Sharp Eyes” system.

Today China’s most sophisticated surveillance system is in the western region of Xinjiang, home to the Muslim Uighur ethnic minority. China has locked up hundreds of thousands of Uighurs in “reeducation camps” for practicing their religion, accessing banned sites on their phones, or having family members studying abroad.

A report by Foreign Policy revealed that Western investors, including firms like JPMorgan, Vanguard, and Fidelity, have invested heavily in two of China’s major security camera companies, Hikvision and Dahua Technology. The two companies have won at least $1.2 billion in government contracts for surveillance projects across Xinjiang targeting Uighurs. Companies like Intel and Nvidia are also helping Hikvision and Dahua improve their artificial intelligence capabilities, Foreign Policy reported.

China’s surveillance is extremely concerning for groups that Beijing considers politically sensitive: Uighurs, Tibetans, dissidents, and human rights advocates. And as the government devises new ways to track its people inside China, it’s also finding new ways to pressure those who have fled the country. One method: preventing family members—including American citizens—from leaving China.

Last year, Beijing stopped at least three U.S. citizens, including a pregnant woman, from exiting the country, according to The Daily Beast. The State Department’s travel advisory for China states that China uses exit bans on U.S. citizens not only in cases of business disputes, court orders, and government investigations, but also “to compel their family members or colleagues to cooperate with Chinese courts or investigators.”

John Kamm of the U.S.-based human rights group Dui Hua Foundation told The Daily Beast he knew of two dozen cases in the past year and a half where Americans were not allowed to leave China. Last year, Beijing prevented University of Technology Sydney associate professor Feng Chongyi from leaving the country while on a trip to research Chinese human rights lawyers. Authorities finally allowed Feng to return home after international coverage of his situation.

Last week, China continued its interference in Australia by reportedly threatening the TV producers of a scheduled news segment about China’s growing influence in the Pacific region. Kirsty Thomson, executive producer of Australia’s 60 Minutes, said she received an angry phone call from the Chinese Embassy in Canberra.

“Take this down and take it to your leaders,” yelled Cao Saxian, the embassy’s head of media affairs. According to Australia’s 9News, Cao claimed the show’s crew had illegally filmed the exterior of the Chinese Embassy on the island of Vanuatu and flown a drone over it. Thomson countered that they had filmed the embassy from a public space and the drone did not fly over the embassy.

“You will listen,” Cao continued, shouting over the phone, according to Thomson. “There must be no more misconduct in the future.”

Standing up to power:

In an interview in The New York Review of Books, Guo Yuhua, a professor at Beijing’s Tsinghua University and an outspoken public intellectual, speaks out about what it’s like to have her own censor, how the Communist Party has destroyed real Chinese culture, and how Chinese college students are brainwashed. “In China, everyone criticizes the market and capitalism,” Guo said. “That’s really easy. That’s safe. But that’s not China’s problem. The problem isn’t capitalism. It’s power.”