With the advancement of technology, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has integrated a vast surveillance network with mobile payments, ticket records, and social data, establishing a highly digitized monitoring system. In some cities, the surveillance system can even trigger alerts when foreign nationals enter specific areas.
In recent years, the CCP has been continuously promoting the so-called “smart cities” and “modernization of social governance,” which include large-scale surveillance system constructions such as the “Xueliang Project” and “Sky Net Project.” These systems incorporate surveillance cameras in city streets, transportation hubs, and public places into a unified platform, gradually integrating them with identity card systems, travel ticket platforms, mobile phone real-name systems, and payment platform data.
According to a report by Deutsche Welle, a network security researcher using the alias “NetAskari” recently accessed an unencrypted CCP network management backend. Expecting to see automatically generated simulated test data, he was surprised to find familiar faces displayed on the screen.
It was a complete database that covered almost all foreign journalists stationed in Beijing around 2021, including their official passport photos taken at immigration offices, private phone numbers, visa details, and dates of birth. NetAskari even discovered his own personal information from the database, and the details were remarkably accurate.
NetAskari said, “When working as a journalist in China, you basically assume that you are under their surveillance at all times. But what surprised me was how easily I could access this highly sensitive system.”
What NetAskari accidentally stumbled upon was a part of the “holographic profiles” surveillance system that the CCP is currently shaping. The remote tracking system he unintentionally accessed was believed to be related to the technology test versions used by the Zhangjiakou Public Security System in Hebei Province during the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Although it was just a testing interface, it was filled with real dataset that clearly outlined the evolution of the CCP’s national surveillance apparatus, progressing from ordinary street surveillance networks to a “social control behemoth” that integrates various data, operates 24/7, and has predictive capabilities.
Over the years, the CCP has built one of the world’s largest urban surveillance networks and gradually interconnected public cameras, community monitoring, and police systems through projects like the “Xueliang Project,” making it possible to track individual movements across regions.
Today, this system no longer solely relies on street surveillance cameras but further integrates high-speed rail and flight real-name systems, hotel registration systems, mobile location data, and mobile payment records to form a data chain that tracks individual behaviors.
In some technical demonstrations, the system could even reconstruct an individual’s travel routes, the train carriages and seating information they used within a specific timeframe, and match them with images captured by facial recognition cameras to enhance identity recognition accuracy.
It is worth noting that foreign journalists and citizens of specific countries are marked as “high-value targets” in certain security systems. Citizens from the so-called “Five Eyes” countries – the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada – are included in additional risk assessment scopes in certain security models.
Deep within the backend system, some individuals are tagged with real-time tracking labels. Once they enter specific sensitive areas, the system may alert local public security units for further on-site management and verification.
In the past, foreign journalists in sensitive areas could sometimes evade surveillance personnel through itinerary adjustments or temporary movement changes. However, with the enhanced data integration capabilities, authorities can accurately predict travel routes by cross-referencing transportation ticket purchases, mobile payments, and communication records, significantly reducing the traditional space for evading surveillance.
According to reports, if the data network detects journalists’ contact with specific individuals, the police only need to make a call and intimidate the sources. In this leakproof surveillance state, the concept of “secret investigation” is being completely erased.
At the core of the control center, the system automatically generates precise social relationship maps based on the interaction frequency of the tracked subjects captured by the cameras, accurately showing who knows whom and how long they have been together.
NetAskari stated, “In Western democratic countries, there would be debates about this… but in China, such debates do not exist at all. The police and national security agencies operate almost without any supervision, doing as they please.”