How does China use advanced surveillance to subdue millions?

The Uighur minority in western China's Xinjiang province is under strict electronic surveillance, according to an investigation by the New York Times.

The paper described what Muslims are exposed to as a "virtual cage" that complements the political indoctrination program forced by the authorities into subjugation in large concentration camps run by Beijing in the mainly Muslim province.

The Chinese authorities have set up two or more million Uighurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang training camps, in an effort to turn them into "secular citizens who never challenge the Chinese Communist Party."

The program helps the authorities identify those who should be sent to political indoctrination camps or interrogate them, and then put them under surveillance after their release.

Observation is discriminatory
The investigation, based on government and corporate records as well as interviews with insiders in the technology sector, showed that China had already linked Xingjiang to a network of separate electronic surveillance cameras, using an army of staff to force ethnic minorities to undergo a monitoring program Gathering information, while turning a blind eye to the ethnic Han in China, which accounts for 36 percent of the province's population.

The New York Times began its investigation of the TV show in late 2017 on the sidelines of the industrial exhibition in Wuxhen City, east China's Zhejiang Province, to introduce visitors to the advanced surveillance technology used to monitor movements of ethnic minorities.

She stated that a technical expert had introduced the monitoring system on a large screen. The parade featured police stations, checkpoints and sites that witnessed recent security incidents in Kashgar city in Xinjiang province, west of the country.

Do not leave scrap or incoming
The expert explained how the system could retrieve the image of a person who had been arrested at a checkpoint on a highway, the address of his residence and his identity number.

The system then checks billions of records and reviews the details of the person's background, family ties, relationship to a previous case, and recent visits to a hotel or café.

The show offered visitors a rare glimpse into the electronic surveillance system that monitors everything in the corners of the volatile Xinjiang province.

The surveillance system uses an application that allows police to detain persons on suspicion of stopping smart phones, or simply to avoid using front doors when entering or leaving their homes or because they have supplied fuel to other people's cars.

Police also use the application at checkpoints - "virtual barriers" - around Xingyang. If someone is considered a potential threat, the surveillance system triggers an alert whenever a person tries to leave the neighborhood or enter a public place, according to Human Rights Watch.

Experience billions of dollars
China's leaders are investing billions of dollars each year in developing population control systems in Xinjiang, making the province "an incubator of increasingly invasive police systems that may circulate throughout the country and beyond," the newspaper said.

US President Donald Trump's aides have begun to monitor this development as part of Washington's efforts to crack down on Chinese companies as part of a trade war between the two countries.

The aides argue that China is using technology to strengthen its "authoritarian" regime at home and abroad, stressing that the United States should move to put an end to it.

The surveillance system used in the city of Kashgar - developed and sold by the China Defense Electronics Technology Corporation - is the latest in a thriving new market for technology products that the Beijing government can use to monitor and suppress millions of Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic groups in Xinjiang.

Military application on civilian
"The system was designed to apply the ideas of military space systems to public civil security," the paper said in an interview with the electronics technology engineer Wang Pingda, describing the system as "an earlier idea of ​​its time."

This monitoring system benefits from networks of informants in residential neighborhoods, tracking individuals and analyzing their behavior, trying to predict crimes, protests and possible violence before determining which security forces should be deployed in the area concerned.

Trump's management is considering the possibility of including Hevision, the CCTV industry - a company that is at the heart of the Xinjiang conflict - blacklisted and banned from buying US technology.

Hikvijn installed surveillance cameras in mosques and detention camps in Xinjiang. China Electronics Technology Corporation owns 42 percent of Hekfigen through its subsidiaries.