DATA-DRIVEN AUTHORITARIANISM. CHINA EXPORTS ITS "MODEL" OF POPULATION CONTROL

54.5 billion dollars invested in 2019 with a projection of 88.7 billion dollars per year between now and 2030.

This is what was revealed by Markets and Markets, a platform specialized in the dissemination of statistical data on expanding markets.

Everything is linked to the trimph of the so-called "Smart Cities", a project that impacts all continents, including Africa.

China currently holds the record with 626 million CCTV cameras, one for every two inhabitants.

There is a report called "Data-centric Authoritarianism: How China's Development of Frontier Technologies Could Globalize Repression".

Beijing is at the forefront of exporting its technology-based authoritarian surveillance systems and is finding too many buyers interested in extreme control of the People under the guise of security.

The Chinese one is now classified as a Techno-Authoritarian State with its origins dating back to the 1998 "Golden Shield" project, the national plan for integrated digital surveillance, including its censorship system known as the "Great Firewall".

The checking system is also able to measure citizens' blood pressure, detecting a probable propensity to protest against government action so that it can be stopped, already in its infancy.

An efficient method that can guarantee the domination of political forces in power if populations do not dissent effectively.

According to the same report, these emerging technologies allow the refinement of sophisticated and targeted propaganda campaigns and the implementation of algorithmic mass repression, with movement controls similar to those implemented against the Uighurs in Xinjiang.

In Xinjiang, millions of Uighur Muslims have been arrested after being "flagged" by software that identifies suspicious behavior.

Since 2017, between eight hundred thousand and two million Uighurs and other Muslims, many Kazakhs and Uzbeks, have been detained.

For the Chinese government, these facilities are "vocational education and training centers".

While, for some activists, they are like concentration camps.

Many complaints have shown that detainees were forced to swear allegiance to the CCP, to renounce Islam, to sing hymns to communism and to learn Mandarin.

The Uighurs are suspected by the Chinese government of extremist and separatist ideas and, therefore, targeted to eliminate threats to the territorial integrity, government and people of China.

For the Chinese government, any expression of Islam in Xinjiang is extremist as it is historically associated with independence movements.

It is obvious that, from the CCP's point of view, a soft response to the events in Xinjiang would open the doors to independence movements in other regions of China that do not want to give up Xinjiang, which is home to China's largest reserves of coal and natural gas.

Yet, the development of these resources marginalizes the Uyghur population by transferring the advantage to other areas.

According to researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, forced labor is an important element of the government's plan for the economic development of Xinjiang, which includes the transformation of the country into a textile and garment manufacturing hub. For Chinese officials, this policy is "poverty reduction."

Xinjiang is a grid-based management system in which cities and villages have been divided into squares of about 500 people.

Each square has a police station that closely monitors residents by regularly scanning their IDs, taking photographs and fingerprints, and checking their cellphones.

In some cities, such as Kashgar in western Xinjiang, police checkpoints are set up every 100 meters or so, and facial recognition cameras are everywhere, and much of this information is collected in a huge database, the Integrated Joint Operations Platform, which uses artificial intelligence to create lists of so-called suspicious people.

Because of its abundance of natural resources and sunlight, Beijing sees Xinjiang as a crucial hub for its green energy transition.

The production of solar panels and batteries for electric vehicles is said to be “highly exposed” to Uighur forced labor.

According to the Sourcing Journal: 35% of the world's solar-grade polysilicon comes from Xinjiang, a major source of nickel and lithium, needed for electric vehicle batteries.

It is clear that, given the results, the Chinese experience has become a "model" of success capable of inspiring all political classes looking for shortcuts at a global level.

The technologies available for continuous monitoring of citizens, the billions of data and images collected and easily managed with the new efficiency offered by artificial intelligence are able to guarantee Power to anyone who tires too much with the rules of Democracy.

Of course, on the other hand, an immoderate amount of electrical energy is needed and it is necessary that the People are not aware and that they do not rebel by embracing the priority of "security", renouncing every form of freedom and accepting to live exposed in an eternal showcase on which only the censors of authoritarian powers look out.