(man speaking foreign language)
- [Narrator] This woman is being scolded
for being outside without a face mask
and was chased back into her home.
(man speaking in foreign language)
- [Narrator] These people are being admonished
for hanging out in a group. (drone buzzing)
They were all caught by Chinese authorities
who have been deploying drones
equipped with high-resolution cameras and loudspeakers.
(man speaking foreign language)
- [Narrator] It's one part
of China's massive surveillance strategy
to tackle the spread of the coronavirus
which has reached just about every region in the country.
The virus has infected more than 80,000 in China,
resulting in the deaths
of more than 2000 people in the country,
far surpassing the death toll from SARS.
- The difference between 2003 and 2020
is really enormous in terms of the government's reliance on
and development of surveillance technology.
Almost none of these tools were on offer at that time.
- [Narrator] Sophie Richardson is the China Director
at Human Rights Watch.
She says during this public health crisis,
China is embarking on an unprecedented use of surveillance
by using big data and its citizens.
So what exactly is China's surveillance strategy
and can it work to battle the epidemic?
(man speaking foreign language)
- [Narrator] There are an estimated
more than 300 million surveillance cameras in China
and authorities are using them to monitor Chinese citizens.
- Many of the surveillance cameras in use in China now
are equipped with facial recognition capabilities
which simply gives the authorities the ability
to track who specifically
has gone to which precise location.
- [Narrator] Combine that with data
scraped from hospital records,
police files, and public transportation history.
All that is stored and linked to national ID cards,
which gives the Chinese government granular information
about all its citizens.
In January, a man who tested positive for the coronavirus
used public buses and subways
to crisscross China's eastern city of Nanjing.
The police posted his journey with specific dates and times
on social media with a warning
that anyone who was in that area get tested for the virus.
China's public health authorities
have been candid about the use of big data
during this public health crisis.
(Li speaking foreign language)
- [Narrator] They even developed a mobile phone app
called the Close Contact Detector.
The app has a database of people
who have tested positive or have symptoms,
so as soon as you type in your name
and national ID and log in,
the app will tell you if you've ever come into close contact
with someone who tested positive or if you're in the clear.
So far, more than 200 million people have used the app.
- These new and different uses of technology
around the coronavirus
may help resolve some of the public health concerns,
but it's also another way for the government
to gather large amounts of information about people,
really, effectively without their consent
and, in some cases, without even their knowledge.
- [Narrator] Chinese health officials say all this data
is in the pursuit of controlling the epidemic.
(Xue speaking foreign language)
- In China, many people probably have not developed
that kind of awareness in terms of protecting their privacy,
protecting their civil liberties.
- [Narrator] Yanzhong Huang studies global health
at the Council on Foreign Relations in the U.S.
He says many in China want this type of monitoring
because it's about life or death.
- And when they were given the choices
of protecting their health
and protecting their civil liberties, you know,
probably would choose the former
even to the detriment of the latter.
- [Narrator] Huang says increasing population control
during a health crisis can be a slippery slope.
- This widespread use of surveillance technologies
may also encourage the use of the same technologies,
surveillance techniques even after they operate
for purposes may not be really justifiable.
(pleasant orchestral music)
- [Narrator] People are also a big part
of its surveillance apparatus.
After all, President Xi Jinping
said the fight against the virus was a people's war.
Authorities send out text messages
telling people to go directly to authorities
if they come from Hubei Province
where the coronavirus first emerged
and announcements are posted all around town
encouraging everyone to monitor each other.
(man speaking foreign language)
- [Narrator] Police patrol streets
telling people without face masks to go home.
Some managers of apartment complexes
go door to door to check on residents' health conditions.
- This may sort of suggest that this would be viral
of these cultural issues we are weighing.
You saw there's people monitoring their neighbors,
you know, or even their relatives.
- [Narrator] Some provinces have started giving an incentive
to monitor family members' travel histories and health.
(boy speaking foreign language)
(girl speaking foreign language)
(woman speaking foreign language)
(man shouts in foreign language)
- [Narrator] In Sichuan Province in western China,
snitching can snag you as much as 5000 yuan.
That's roughly equivalent to a monthly salary
that's more than minimum wage.
One government in Guangdong Province
is offering 30 face masks in exchange for snitch reports.
During this public health crisis,
China hasn't been the only country
to use technology to track patients.
In South Korea, health authorities are legally allowed
to sift through credit card records,
CCTV footage, and mobile phone locations
to pin down the travel histories
of those infected or at risk.
That information is then shared with the public.
In China's surveillance state,
not only do authorities have access
to more data than other governments,
but citizens have no way to opt out of that data collection.
Beijing says all this is in the best interest of the public.
- We'll have to be able to see
how the virus ultimately played out,
who was affected, who wasn't
whether the surveillance technology helped.
(dramatic orchestral music)