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China's Homegrown AI and Surveillance Tech Boosts Global Social Control: ASPI/NED Report
webRelevant to AI governance discussions about dual-use surveillance technology and the geopolitical implications of AI capabilities being deployed for authoritarian social control, including potential global export of such systems.
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Importance: 42/100news articlenews
Summary
A February 2025 National Endowment for Democracy report finds China is leveraging AI, big data, facial recognition, quantum computing, and brain-computer interfaces to expand domestic surveillance and export authoritarian control tools globally. The report highlights how DeepSeek and 'city brain' systems enable real-time population monitoring, while digital yuan and quantum computing threaten financial privacy and encryption respectively.
Key Points
- •China's AI surveillance systems combine facial recognition and multi-source data streams into 'city brains' capable of preemptively suppressing protests.
- •Brain-computer interfaces and VR tools under development could allow authorities to influence citizens' mental states, raising novel privacy and agency concerns.
- •Advances in quantum computing may eventually break current encryption, endangering dissidents and critics of Beijing worldwide.
- •The digital yuan enables granular financial surveillance by allowing the government to track individual transactions.
- •China exports these surveillance technologies beyond its borders, expanding authoritarian influence globally.
Cited by 2 pages
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| AI-Enabled Authoritarian Takeover | Risk | 61.0 |
| AI Mass Surveillance | Risk | 64.0 |
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# China’s homegrown tech boosts global surveillance, social controls: report
## The ruling Chinese Communist Party is using AI and big data to monitor citizens at home and abroad, and is exporting its technology for use overseas.
ByLin Yueyang for RFA Mandarin
2025.02.20
Homegrown AI and other cutting-edge technology is boosting internal surveillance by the ruling Chinese Communist Party and expanding its overseas influence and infiltration operations, and is already in use far beyond its borders, according to a recent report.
China’s recent advances in AI and big data, including its recently launched [DeepSeek AI model](https://www.rfa.org/english/china/2025/01/27/china-usa-ai-deepseek-tops-app-chart/ "https://www.rfa.org/english/china/2025/01/27/china-usa-ai-deepseek-tops-app-chart/"), will boost the government’s surveillance capabilities, including overseas, according to Feb. 11 report from the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy.
“The People’s Republic of China stands out for its quest to collect and leverage unprecedented types and volumes of data, from public and private sources and from within and beyond its borders, for social control,” according to the report.
China’s increasingly powerful AI surveillance systems [use facial recognition](https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/facial-recognition-02172020173026.html "https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/facial-recognition-02172020173026.html") and combine data streams to create sophisticated “city brains” that can track events in real time, wrote report author Valentin Weber.
“These tools create a pervasive [surveillance dragnet](https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/profiling-12222020103743.html "https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/profiling-12222020103743.html") and may be used by state authorities to quell protests before they start,” it said.
china-ai-neuro-quantum-surveillance-security-threat-02 Visitors walk past a stand with AI security cameras using facial recognition technology at the 14th China International Exhibition on Public Safety and Security, in Beijing on Oct. 24, 2018. (Nicolas Asfouri/AFP)
China is also developing virtual reality tools and brain-computer interfaces that could potentially allow the authorities to influence people’s mental states, affecting their privacy and agency, according to the report.
Under Chinese law, any data harvested from such processes must be handed over the the government, even if it was gathered by a private company.
### ‘Fine-tuned control’
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