fredag 6. desember 2024

Hong Kong officials learn neighborhood surveillance from China

Hong Kong is sending district councilors and other local officials to mainland China to learn how the ruling Chinese Communist Party uses local networks of volunteers to monitor the population and target potential unrest before it happens. China’s “red armband” brigade of state-sanctioned busybodies have been dubbed the biggest intelligence network on the planet by social media users, and have supplied information that has also led police to crack major organized crime, according to state media.

Neighborhood committees in China have long been tasked with monitoring the activities of ordinary people in urban areas, while its grid management system turbo-charges the capacity of officials even in rural areas to monitor what local people are doing, saying and thinking. These local forms of surveillance and social control are known in Chinese political jargon as the “Fengqiao Experience.”