{"id":174368,"date":"2025-12-04T08:18:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-04T08:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/174368\/"},"modified":"2025-12-04T08:18:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-04T08:18:11","slug":"chinas-censorship-and-surveillance-were-already-intense-ai-is-turbocharging-those-systems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/174368\/","title":{"rendered":"China\u2019s censorship and surveillance were already intense. AI is turbocharging those systems"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n China\u2019s ruling Communist Party is using artificial intelligence to turbocharge the surveillance and control of its 1.4 billion citizens, with the technology reaching further into daily life, predicting public demonstrations and monitoring the moods of prison inmates, according to a new report<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n Many of these systems are already well-documented \u2013 from the country\u2019s army of online censors maintaining its Great Firewall, to the surveillance cameras ubiquitous on almost every street and block across urban China.\n <\/p>\n

\n But the report released Monday by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) details how the government\u2019s AI tools, used to \u201cautomate censorship, enhance surveillance and pre\u2011emptively suppress dissent,\u201d have grown more sophisticated<\/a> in the past two years \u2013 against the backdrop of a deepening US-China tech rivalry.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cChina is harnessing AI to make its existing systems of control far more efficient and intrusive. AI lets the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) monitor more people, more closely, with less effort,\u201d said Nathan Attrill, a report co-author and senior China analyst at ASPI, which is partially funded by the Australian and other foreign governments.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIn practice, AI has become the backbone of a far more pervasive and predictive form of authoritarian control.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n The authors added that the implications are both broad and deep \u2013 allowing Beijing even greater control<\/a> in policing its population and managing the flow of information, as well as strengthening its power overseas as a global exporter of surveillance technology.\n <\/p>\n

\n Beijing has invested hundreds of billions of dollars<\/a> into AI-related businesses, making big strides<\/a> in research and development \u2013 despite the US working to restrict the supply of high-power AI chips to China.\n <\/p>\n

\n The public has embraced the technology, too; a 2024 survey<\/a> by global research group IPSOS found that Chinese respondents were far more excited and optimistic about AI than their peers across 32 countries.\n <\/p>\n

\n Even Chinese leader Xi Jinping has highlighted the importance of AI in the country\u2019s evolving internet policy. At a November meeting with top CCP officials, he emphasized that AI \u201cpresents challenges to cyberspace governance while offering new avenues of support,\u201d according to Chinese state media<\/a> \u2013 which the ASPI report claims are euphemisms for maintaining the regime\u2019s power and stability.\n <\/p>\n

\n ASPI\u2019s findings aren\u2019t entirely novel; other researchers<\/a> and institutes<\/a> around the world have previously issued similar reports<\/a> and warnings. Chinese leaders have spoken openly about their AI ambitions, some of which are shared by other countries. And it\u2019s not yet a nationwide standard \u2013 local governments in big urban hubs with the existing digital infrastructure, like Beijing or Shanghai, are experimenting with AI in ways that rural provinces or smaller cities can\u2019t yet.\n <\/p>\n

\n But \u201cmany of the government\u2019s intentions and policies are now becoming a reality,\u201d said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist studying internet freedom at the University of California, Berkeley.\n <\/p>\n

\n And, he added, \u201cthe report is showing us the clear indicator that China is heading to the direction (of using AI nationwide) \u2026 As soon as the digital infrastructure is ready, those things are being implemented.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n With AI now used in some places for policing, court proceedings and prison operations, the report claims the technology could eventually become integrated in every step of China\u2019s already-opaque criminal justice system.\n <\/p>\n

\n Monitoring begins with China\u2019s vast network of surveillance cameras<\/a>. While there aren\u2019t comprehensive statistics on the number of cameras in the country, estimates go up to 600 million cameras across China, according to the report. That\u2019s roughly 3 cameras for every 7 people.\n <\/p>\n

\n Like in many other countries, these cameras increasingly have AI capabilities like facial recognition and location tracking. For instance, documents from one Shanghai district detail plans for AI-powered cameras and drones to \u201cautomatically discover and intelligently enforce the law,\u201d including potentially alerting police to crowd gatherings, the report found.\n <\/p>\n

\n China\u2019s Supreme Court has also urged all courts<\/a> to \u201cdevelop a competent artificial intelligence system by 2025,\u201d which can be used in various legal proceedings including trials and administrative work, the report said. In one example, a Shanghai AI system can reportedly recommend whether judges and prosecutors should arrest or grant suspended sentences to criminal suspects and defendants.\n <\/p>\n

\n Finally, there is a push for more \u201csmart prisons\u201d where AI tools can track prisoners\u2019 locations and behaviors. In one prison<\/a>, facial recognition cameras monitored prisoners\u2019 expressions, flagging them for intervention if they seemed angry. At a drug rehabilitation center<\/a>, prisoners underwent AI-assisted therapy, delivered through virtual reality (VR) headsets.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n \u201cA defendant caught through the help of AI-based surveillance and tried in an AI-assisted courtroom may then be sentenced based on the recommendation of an AI system to a \u2018smart prison\u2019 \u2026 incorporating extensive smart technology,\u201d the report said.\n <\/p>\n

\n China\u2019s State Council Information Office and Ministry of Justice have not responded to CNN\u2019s request for comments. They have previously criticized ASPI for receiving funding from US government agencies and claimed it has \u201cno credibility.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n These smart technologies can help prevent crime and make Chinese cities far safer, Xiao acknowledged \u2013 but \u201cbecause of the political system, the same technology can be used, and actually is being used, (for) political persecution.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n China\u2019s court system, which answers to the CCP, already boasts a conviction rate above 99%.\n <\/p>\n

\n Xiao pointed to several vulnerable groups who may be further targeted \u2013 including religious and ethnic minorities like Uyghurs, and political dissidents, who have long faced government repression.\n <\/p>\n

\n Chinese companies, backed and funded by the central government, are now also working to develop large language models (LLMs) for minority languages \u2013 including Uyghur, Tibetan, Mongolian and Korean \u2013 for better \u201cmonitoring and controlling communications in those languages,\u201d the report found.\n <\/p>\n

\n These LLMs could potentially be used to surveil what minority communities are posting and sharing, and to manipulate what information they receive, according to Xiao and the report.\n <\/p>\n

\n The report also highlighted the role of China\u2019s biggest tech companies, calling them \u201ckey enablers and enforcers of the CCP\u2019s online content censorship policies.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n These companies were always required to follow the central government\u2019s content regulations \u2013 but have now become key figures developing censorship technologies and selling them to smaller companies around the country, sometimes cooperating with authorities on criminal cases, the report said.\n <\/p>\n

\n For instance, ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, censors content on Douyin<\/a>, the version of the app primarily used in China<\/a> \u2013 blocking or downvoting politically sensitive content.\n <\/p>\n

\n Tencent, a social media and gaming giant, uses AI to monitor user behavior and assign them \u201crisk scores\u201d based on their online activity, including penalties for violations across social media, chat groups and other communication platforms, the report said.\n <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n Search engine Baidu sells a number of content moderation tools and has cooperated with government agencies in more than 100 criminal cases, primarily regarding fraud and cybercrime, the report said.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cOnline, AI enables real-time censorship and public-opinion shaping: platforms use automated moderation, sentiment analysis and recommendation algorithms to downrank criticism and push party-aligned narratives,\u201d said Attrill, the report co-author.\n <\/p>\n

\n CNN has reached out to all three companies for comment.\n <\/p>\n

\n The growing ecosystem of Chinese AI surveillance and censorship tools, which small and medium enterprises are developing in-house as well, also has global implications, the report warned \u2013 with other authoritarian countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia also using AI to surveil their populations.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cChinese LLMs these days are dominant open-weights models, which means that many other countries \u2013 their companies, their research units \u2013 might use the Chinese model because it\u2019s cheap, it\u2019s free,\u201d said Xiao.\n <\/p>\n

\n But \u201cif you use those models, you\u2019re fundamentally sitting on their platforms,\u201d he added. \u201cThe censorship and the surveillance and the control, the influence, come with it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"China\u2019s ruling Communist Party is using artificial intelligence to turbocharge the surveillance and control of its 1.4 billion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":174369,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-174368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=174368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/174369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=174368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=174368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=174368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}