China's Mass Surveillance More Sophisticated Than Thought -- Isn't it awesome?

Dear readers,

Here is the link to the original article from Bloomberg.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-01/alibaba-backed-face-scans-show-big-tech-ties-to-china-s-xinjiang

To summarize the content:
The US based human rights watchdogs found that police use mobile app to track citizens in Xinjiang China. This mobile app uses facial recognition and big data technology to flag suspicious behaviors related to terrorism. Adding to what previously identified re-education camp, the US State Department says this is a massive violation of human rights and US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo urged corporate America to think twice before doing business in there.

Who are you trying to fool here? The Chinese or the rest of the world? I would argue that even American people would find this accusation laughable.



The author of the original article is Blake Schmidt, a Hong Kong based Bloomberg journalist. He might be a smart guy (which I do not know). However, for an educated adult to write stuff like this, I can only think of two possible reasons: 1) He has no basic logical thinking and lacks the ability to properly sense the reality of the world. 2) He was intentionally lying and misleading viewers to earn traffic and keep his job. Either way, I think Bloomberg should behave ethically and let go this individual.

Enough about the author, lets talk about the content of this article.
First of all, instead of being terrified, should we be happy to see how China is peacefully fighting terrorism? If all facts are true in this article, China is preventing terrorism using AI and big data. Think about how US fought terrorism. They waged war on Iraq. The American warships fired missiles to millions of innocent civilians for a made-up excuse that Iraq possessed massive destruction weapon (which they provided no evidence at all). Neither the mobile app nor the re-education camp (not concentration camp and no evidence of torture in any form) matched the scale of human rights violation of the American's massive killing. After all, its all about fighting terrorism which protects the vast majority civilians (including the Uighurs) against the minority extremists. I would say this is already a huge advancement in protecting human rights in fighting terrorism. Imagine you are in an US airport and they suspect you to be terrorism related. You will get arrested and gun pointed to your head immediately. What a laughable accusation.

Secondly, everyone read about Wikileaks should know that your government is watching you. Not only China, every country is the same. Stop talking about privacy. You got no privacy in the States either. It's just you did not realize that you were spied on. They use every possible backdoor to watch you. You are not saved from the US intelligence department even if you live in Germany and you are the president of that country. You can tell me how government collecting data breached your privacy. But do not just single out China. Actually China is doing a great job in lowering crime rate by enhancing its public surveillance. Surveillance cameras are already at every corner of the streets. If you fear the government (criminals mostly), then you would definitely be more fearful. But I feel safer as criminals has no where to hide themselves. Nowadays you access plane, bullet trains via your ID card in China. Your credit information is also link to your ID card. If you violate the law or have bad debt, your traveling will be restricted too. To be honest, I prefer walk under camera rather than being killed by an unknown murderer on the free street of LA .

China has been one of the world super powers (dominant ones) for majority of the time through our 5000-year-history. China did not invade nor colonize other countries like the western did. Why so frightened about the rise of China? The brutal, inhuman Chinese in your eyes is helping African countries build their road and basic infrastructure to help advance their economic development, while the human, noble westerns are waging wars on other countries and created massive refugees (which ironically became their biggest problem now). Think with your brain, not your prejudice.