LIANYUNGANG   -   High-tech CCTV, super-accurate DNA-testing technology and facial tracking software: China is pushing its state-of-the-art surveillance and policing tactics abroad. Delegates from law enforcement across the world descended this week on a port city in eastern China showcasing the work of dozens of local firms, several linked to repression in the northwestern region of Xinjiang. China is one of the most surveilled societies on Earth, with millions of CCTV cameras scattered across cities and facial recognition technology widely used in everything from day-to-day law enforcement to political repression. Its police serve a dual purpose: keeping the peace and cracking down on petty crime while also ensuring challenges to the ruling Communist Party are swiftly stamped out. During the opening ceremony in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, China’s police minister lauded Beijing’s training of thousands of police from abroad over the last 12 months -- and promised to help thousands more over the next year. An analyst said this was “absolutely a sign that China aims to export” its policing.  “Beijing is hoping to normalise and legitimise its policing style and... the authoritarian political system in which it operates,” Bethany Allen at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute told AFP. “The more countries that learn from the Chinese model, the fewer countries willing to criticise such a state-first, repressive approach.” Several foreign police officers said they hoped to use Chinese technology and increase collaboration. “We can learn from China,” said Sydney Gabela, a major general in the South African police service.

“We wanted to check out the new technologies that are coming out so that we can deploy them in South Africa,” Gabela told AFP. At the conference, exhibitions displayed a dizzying array of policing tools. One firm, Caltta Technologies, showed off a project helping the southern African nation of Mozambique to set up an advanced “Incident Response Platform” and touted its abilities to use big data in “rapid target location”. Tech giant Huawei said its “Public Safety Solution” was now in use in over 100 countries and regions, from Kenya to Saudi Arabia. The tech giant was sanctioned by the United States in 2019, described as “an arm” of the Chinese surveillance state.