China’s Mass Surveillance: Real Names and the Power of Big Data

Big brother is watching you!

The slogan from George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four has become reality for people in China. The Chinese government’s ubiquitous real-name verification policy, together with advanced technology such as facial recognition, big data, and artificial intelligence (AI), have left Chinese people nowhere to hide.

Ubiquitous Real-name Verification Policy

“You know what? You have to take a mugshot before purchasing a cell phone number in Shanghai now!” Linda Zhang*, who has lived in the United States for a couple years, was shocked by her recent shopping experience in a China Telecom shop when she visited Shanghai, her hometown, in late December 2017.

“Have you ever seen an American movie where an arrested man has to stand right in front of a camera, hold a sign with his name, and take a photograph for the police? It was almost the same procedure in that Shanghai telecom shop!” Zhang told The Diplomat. “The only differences are that what I had to hold was my ID card and, thankfully, I didn’t need to take another side-view photo.”

In 2010, China put forward a policy requiring that all Chinese cell phone numbers have real-name verification. Few took the policy seriously, regarding it as an unrealistic move by a government too procedurally inefficient to enforce it. However, a series of laws issued in the last few years – particularly the anti-terrorism law and new national security law – provided the Chinese government legal grounding to enforce the policy of real-name verification.

In 2016, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology required that all Chinese cell phone numbers be real-name verified by the end of June 2017.

“[People should] view the real-name verification as serious as a part of anti-terrorism law,” the ministry said. “Users whose identity are unclear or who refuse to register with real names should not be provided services.”

Zhang’s experience demonstrated the government’s latest measures to prevent people from purchasing a cell phone number without their own ID card, although Chinese state media has not reported on the “mug shot” requirement.

And it’s not just cell phone purchases.

In fact, a comprehensive real-name system has come to dominate every Chinese person’s life – from train, plane, and bus tickets, to personal banking, money management, and online payment accounts, and across the internet.

Before the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) kicked off its 19th National Congress last year, the government issued multiple new rules requiring that all of China’s social media platforms, online forums, communities, and any other services that provide interactive communication have their users registered with a real name. Under the rules, Weibo, for example, made all its users link their cell phone numbers with their accounts in September 2017.

Booming AI Technology

In July 2017, China’s State Council issued the “Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan,” stating its aim to become the “premier global AI innovation center” with the “first-mover advantage” by 2030.

During the 19th National Congress, Chinese President Xi Jinping also mentioned that China will “promote the integration between the internet, big data, artificial intelligence and real economy.”

In mid-December, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology designed a detailed three-year plan for China’s AI industry, vowing to make breakthroughs in a series of AI products and applications.

Particularly regarding facial recognition technology, or “video image identification systems,” the plan reads:

[We will] support biotech recognition, video comprehension, cross-media fusion and other technological innovations. [We aim to] develop typical applications such as facial recognition that matches ID information, video surveillance, image search and video summarization, and expand these applications into key areas such as security and finance. By 2020, the effective detection rate of facial recognition in complex dynamic scenes should exceed 97 percent and the correct detection rate should exceed 90 percent. [The technology should also] support the recognition of face features in different regions.

AI technology, including facial recognition, is already being used in the public security realm.

More than 20 million closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras have been installed across the country under the “Skynet” and “Skyeye” programs launched by the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The Global Times, one of China’s most pro-government state-run newspapers, reported that China has the largest monitoring network in the world:

For every 1,000 citizens in Beijing (China's most closely-monitored city), for example, there are 59 surveillance cameras, according to statistics released at the 2016 Beijing International Intelligent Hardware Exhibition. This means there is one surveillance camera for every 17 people in Beijing. In China's second- and third-tier cities, however, the density of CCTV cameras is much lower, estimated at under one per 100 people on average

Multiple cities, such as Shanghai, Hohhot, and Bengbu, used facial recognition security systems to enhance safety at railway stations in the weeks leading up to the 19th National Congress. Each passenger had to present their ID cards and train ticket and undergo a facial scan before entering the station.

Recently a video about the “Skynet” went viral on China’s social media networks. In the video, as soon as a person entered a CCTV camera's range, a tag would instantly appear on this person with information including sex, age and clothing, and then this person would be automatically matched with the police’s database of “key focus persons.”

As for the so-called “key focus persons,” the Zhejiang Province public security bodies have divided them into seven categories: Those who “tend to cause social disturbances,” petitioners, those involved in terrorism, major criminals, those involved with drugs, wanted persons, and those with mental health problems.

Those thinking good behavior will protect them are overly optimistic.

Big data technology has enabled the state to trace an individual's every single move, either online or in reality. An individual may never know whether they have crossed the state’s red line and come under greater surveillance before the police finally knock on their door.

On social media, many Chinese netizens have recounted tales of unexpected visits from the police. For example, a college girl recalled that the police visited her at school to demand an explanation for her purchase of female erotica from Taobao (China’s largest online marketplace run by Alibaba group) one year ago. Netizens who bought books banned by the government through online shops were also visited by the police. The police, who had these netizens’ full shopping data, demanded they turn in the banned books.

What’s even more concerning is that the Chinese government is actively developing a Social Credit System (SCS) to rate its 1.3 billion citizens by combining information from government entities.

Shanghai, as one of the most developed cities in China, has already issued an “Honest Shanghai” smartphone app, which allows its citizens to check their “public credit” score as long as they sign on to the app with their national ID number, according to NPR.

Zhu Dake, an outspoken humanities professor at Tongji University in Shanghai, expressed strong doubts about the system, saying it could lead to “credit totalitarianism.”

“They could easily expand the criteria and start judging people on moral or ideological grounds. They're using modern technology to create a vision of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four," he told NPR.

Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, appeared to share Zhu Dake’s view, saying last November:

It is frightening that Chinese authorities are collecting and centralizing ever more information about hundreds of millions of ordinary people, identifying persons who deviate from what they determine to be ‘normal thought,’ and then surveilling them… Until China has meaningful privacy rights and an accountable police force, the government should immediately cease these efforts.

*Name has been changed to protect the interviewee’s identity.