In China, the lucrative business of post-Covid technologies

Sébastien Le Belzic (in Beijing), edited by Solène Leroux 08:28, June 07, 2022

Beijing lifted numerous anti-Covid restrictions on Monday, after a month of fear of confinement for the Chinese capital's 23 million inhabitants.

From this week, it is the end of teleworking, just like in Shanghai where schools are also reopening after two months of closure.

There are still important control measures that are here to stay: compulsory screening, surveillance equipment, thermal cameras… Expensive technologies in which the government has decided to invest considerable sums and which are the delight of Chinese industrialists.

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For the Chinese authorities, the best bulwark against Covid-19 is a small machine the size of a laptop computer called "Digital Sentinel".

These terminals are gradually being rolled out in public places in Shanghai.

A machine to do everything, equipped with a facial recognition system, which in a second checks identities, takes the temperature, checks the health code, the vaccination record and the PCR tests.

Sense Time, the Chinese company specializing in artificial intelligence, has already sold more than two million to the city of Shanghai alone for some seven billion euros.

50 billion euros planned in this context

She is not the only one to take advantage of the zero Covid policy desired by the Chinese regime.

More than 3,000 companies are competing for a gigantic cake.

The government has planned to spend this year the equivalent of 50 billion euros for the realization of PCR tests, the deployment of monitoring equipment and the construction of medical facilities.

All connected to a kind of digital brain centralized by the police.

In the event of a violation of the anti-Covid rules, the constellation of digital sentries will issue the alert and offenders risk at least 15 days in prison.