A surveillance research group, IPVM, published a new report revealing Chinese company Tiandy to be selling its surveillance technology to Iran’s police and military. This is not the first time China has been tagged to support other autocracies. 

Tiandy, with almost $700 million in revenue, is one of the largest video surveillance companies leveraging AI to enable facial recognition technology. The company is involved with China’s PRC police to provide them with two critical technologies. These are the mechanics to track China’s minority group, Uyghur, and the system to intelligently manage ‘tiger chairs’, a torture device. Their ‘ethnicity tracking’ tool to identify people’s races has come under a great deal of scrutiny for being unethical and incorrect. 

But Tiandy is not the concerning tool created in the country. The Chinese police agency leverages an AI-based emotion detection system tested in the Uyghurs in Xinjiang that homes 12 million of the minorities. Tiandy’s website openly boasts about numerous successful projects in Iran, including collaborations with the Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran that have been designated as a “foreign terrorist organisation” by the USA government. Their ‘success stories’ also include working with the Armed Forces Social Security Organization that looks at Iran’s armed forces’ pensions and health insurance. 

While Dai Lin privately owns the company, the CEO is a public supporter of the Chinese Communist Party and a supplier to the Chinese government. The company has signed a five-year contract in Iran. 

Domestic and Geopolitical Policies

The Chinese communist party is known for its mass surveillance, heavily depending on AI to place illegal surveillance systems around the country. The government uses it to flag citizens, snoop on racial minorities and conduct internet censorship. In addition, the country’s domestic police agencies control the citizens by collecting massive data on them to monitor the activities and identify potential dissenters. 

Companies like Huawei have been banned internationally for their apparent surveillance technologies. In addition, Beijing’s spy agencies have come under scrutiny for leveraging the data processing capabilities of Chinese corporations for espionage. In fact, cybersecurity police units have been installed in major internet businesses, leading to cases like Tencent’s WeChat app users being imprisoned for criticising the government.

For instance, during the coronavirus outbreak, Chinese citizens were subjected to a risk-scoring algorithm that assigned green, yellow, or red codes. They were allowed to travel around the country or enter buildings based on the score. A political version of this algorithm is leveraged in China’s Xinjiang, where more than 1 million Muslim Uighurs have been imprisoned. 

China and Iran

Thus, it is no surprise that China supports similar autocracies, such as in Iran, and enables the growth of digital surveillance counties, like in Africa. China seems to be financing autocracies around the globe. 

Iran, among other crimes, has a history of informants moderating social media and tagging dissenters that the country later imprisoned and tortured. Experts have long suspected that Iran is copying China’s digital control model over its citizens through censorship and surveillance. This March, China and Iran agreed to a 25-year strategic partnership, which prescribes increased military and trade relationships between the countries. 

China’s Belt and Road Initiatives 

Despite being scrutinised among Western countries, China has aggressively chased strategic ties with Central Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The country’s Belt and Road Initiative is a global infrastructure development strategy the government adopted in 2013, aiming to invest in close to 70 countries. The plan includes extending China’s digital capabilities across borders for e-commerce, smart cities, and fintech through big data, IoT, smartphones, and undersea cables. 

Chinese companies like Huawei, Alibaba, Hikvision, Dahua or ZTE, are, under the initiative, running a ‘smart cities’ program to aid police and government agencies of other countries. One could go as far as to claim that exporting surveillance technologies is a major part of China’s geopolitical strategy. Thirty-six nationals have already signed up to be a part of China’s project, with Huawei supporting most countries. 

China and Africa

China is leveraging the same initiative to justify its infrastructural investments in Africa’s digital economy, which is majorly powered by Chinese companies. So much so that Huawei backs Africa’s first ‘sovereign’ data centre. Huawei, which has come under global scrutiny for being China’s secret weapon or spy, has constructed up to 70 per cent of Africa’s 4G base stations. 

However, Chinese companies are not the only actors in global surveillance technology trading. A case in point is that surveillance technology is inherently political in nature. While China comes under scrutiny for its autocratic government, nations such as the US, the UK, and Russia have also been revealed to be providing possibly dangerous technologies to other nations.