Democracy Dies in Darkness

China’s finely crafted web of digital surveillance for

the Beijing Olympics has been years in the making
The Games are an opportunity for the government to upgrade already extensive tools to track and control
the population

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By Christian Shepherd

Today at 5:00 a.m. EST

China’s preparations for the Beijing Winter Olympics have been characteristically extensive. Poorly advertised, but
no less far-reaching, though, are the preparations of its security state. High-profile political events provide an
opportunity for the Chinese Communist Party to expand surveillance and experiment with new procedures and
technologies while honing well-tested measures of control.

Ahead of the Opening Ceremonies on Friday, the main thrust of such measures has been ensuring that nothing can
damage China’s image during the Games. Athletes have been warned against making political statements, and
foreign journalists’ ability to report on the broader social and economic impacts of the games is limited by covid-19
controls.

Attempts to ensure a propaganda win have also reached as far as Tibet and Xinjiang, two of the most tightly
controlled regions in the world.

As the world turns its attention to the Beijing Games, here is what we know about what China’s security state is
monitoring.

What is the scope of state surveillance in China?

The full extent of China’s domestic security state has been unclear since 2013, when the Finance Ministry stopped
disclosing it after years of greater spending on internal security than on defense.

What is known is that extensive upgrades to state surveillance have been pursued across China in recent years. This
surveillance state 2.0 has been built by police budgets, creating a vast market for leading Chinese companies that
bring emerging technologies to bear on catching and preventing perceived sources of social instability.

The goal, experts say, is monitoring the whole of society, so avoiding state surveillance requires extreme measures
— and even then, there is no guarantee.

“Whether it’s WiFi sniffers or ID checks when you get a train, book into a hotel, or simply go online, these are
aspects of your life that you know could be tracked and analyzed,” said Maya Wang, China researcher at Human
Rights Watch. “The aim is to make you feel watched, even when you are not.”
Alongside adopting new technologies, the Communist Party has also expanded its idea of who is considered a
threat. Human rights activists fear that a growing emphasis on “extremism” and “terrorism” is being used to justify
government abuses.

Ahead of the Winter Olympics, local governments from Qinghai in northwestern China to Shandong on the east
coast held “counterterrorism” campaigns.

How does this system work in practice?

There are many overlapping parts of China’s security state. There are media censorship and monitoring of online
discussion. There are surveillance and control of dissident figures. There are new methods of voice and image
analysis developed by technology firms. And there is a massive network of low-level volunteer informants on the
lookout for suspicious activity.

At the center of the national security state is President Xi Jinping and the upper echelons of the Communist Party.
In practice, this means that the capital, Beijing, is the heart of a system of coercion and control designed to
apprehend troublemakers.

Work to protect the capital is often carried out far away, however, as police departments across the country are
charged with preventing petitioners or activists from traveling there. In Chifeng, a city in Inner Mongolia nearly
260 miles away, for example, police promised to inspect every car driving in Beijing’s direction.

Many of the upgrades ahead of the Winter Olympics have focused on Zhangjiakou, the joint host city northwest of
Beijing that was considered to have a “poor foundation” for surveillance. Security cameras in the city were
upgraded to keep track of at least 2 million people. In the mountains of Chongli, where the venues are, one high-
definition camera was installed for every square kilometer.

How have things changed under Xi Jinping?

The Summer Olympics of 2008 coincided with a turning point in the evolving security state. That March, Tibetan
iti d b ti ht i t i ti d t t i i l tl l h d ith Chi li
communities, angered by tightening restrictions and state coercion, violently clashed with Chinese police,
undermining Beijing’s big moment.

Since Xi took office in 2012, the Chinese Communist Party’s preoccupation with ensuring national — and its own —
security has only increased. The national security prism is now inescapable, especially for the lengthening list of
groups — Uyghurs, Tibetans, rights lawyers, feminists and foreign journalists, to name a few — considered
inherently a danger to party control.

The “difference between 2008 and 2022 is not just the number of surveillance systems and technologies; it’s also
the intention of building comprehensive, watertight surveillance,” Wang said.

China’s “zero covid” policy has further normalized surveillance. “The pandemic essentially created a situation of
emergency measures. It allowed the government to impose restrictions that before the pandemic would have
attracted debate,” she said.

Will Olympic athletes be affected at the Games?

How much of China’s surveillance apparatus will be targeted at athletes is hard to know. Beijing wants to project an
image of transparency and has made clear it wants politics to be kept out of sports. But the country’s intensifying
domestic controls, brazen arrests of foreign nationals and harassment of activists and journalists have given
Western governments reason for concern.

Security experts have urged anyone going to the Games to assume they will be monitored. The U.S. Olympics and
Paralympics committee, Britain, the Netherlands and Canada have advised athletes to consider taking measures
such as using “burner” phones in Beijing to limit remote monitoring after they return home.

The official Chinese My2022 smartphone app, used to track temperature and daily coronavirus tests, among other
functions, was found to have a “simple but devastating flaw” in its protection of personal health and identification
information, according to analysis by the Citizen Lab, a cybersecurity research project at the University of Toronto’s
Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.

China said the accusations were “without evidence” and later added that, even if there were security flaws, they
h b fi d
have now been fixed.

What steps can people take to thwart snooping?

To limit surveillance risks during the Olympics, cybersecurity experts have suggested that those traveling to Beijing
bring special-purpose laptops and smartphones that can be wiped clean after leaving.

Although Olympics officials have created a gap in the “great firewall” to allow attendees to use usually blocked
platforms such as WhatsApp and Twitter while in Beijing, some analysts recommend caution about logging into
certain social media or email accounts. Using a virtual private network can help mask a device’s identity and create
a more secure connection to the Internet.

But attempting to protect yourself from every dimension of Chinese surveillance would mean thinking like a “drug
kingpin” trying evade the law, the psychological impact of which is probably the last thing athletes want during a
major competition, said Wang, of Human Rights Watch.

Lyric Li in Seoul and Pei Lin Wu in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report.

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