Authored by James Gorrie via The Epoch Times,
Is Beijing hoping to turn other authoritarian societies into digital Chinas?
China’s rise as the world’s leading exporter of surveillance technology is yielding some disturbing results. Beijing’s surveillance export packages comprise an entire technological architecture that can give governments an unprecedented ability to see, identify, and track their populations.
Those technologies include cameras, artificial intelligence, telecommunications networks, cloud computing, facial recognition, license-plate recognition, and centralized command systems. Many mid-sized countries are becoming or are already customers.
Turning Other Nations Into ‘Little Chinas’
Turkey is an important case study.
To be clear, Turkey has not yet become a Chinese-style surveillance state. Its political system and institutions remain different from China’s. That said, Chinese technology companies have established a significant presence in Turkey’s digital infrastructure, and they’re not shy about it. In fact, Huawei has explicitly marketed its AI-powered CCTV and “Safe City,” i.e. surveillance technologies, in the Turkish market.
It’s no mystery that China wants to sell as much merchandise to as many trading partners as possible. But is it also possible that China wants as many partners as possible to use and become dependent upon its surveillance technology so that their societ
