Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • the worst is over.

  • At least that's what the Chinese authorities hope.

  • Today.

  • President Xi Jinping visited Wuhan, where the Corona virus was first detected, on where the number of new cases has dramatically declined.

  • Emergency hospitals of being decommissioned.

  • Now the physical contact is still discouraged.

  • Wear protective suits and masks so I can't see your real faces.

  • But in my heart you are the most lovely people.

  • Therefore, on behalf of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, I would like to express my sincere condolences on pay high respect to you patients of being discharged according to the W H O.

  • China's aggressive response has brought success.

  • Yeah, the forcible lock down of 50 million people.

  • On a restriction on social gathering, his countrywide will be lifted.

  • But what about the new surveillance techniques introduced to curb the spread in Hang Zhou?

  • To enter a tower block, you need to have your temperature taken and registered, and you must have an app on your phone into which you input your name temperature, Recent travel and I D number.

  • The information generates a color code in Hangzhou to go out of the community or to public activities you need to have a green code.

  • Just green, yellow or red Code is automatically decided through the system.

  • It uses big data to decide whether you've bean to affected district's or come into contact with those people.

  • But what if you're well and get a red coat?

  • Anyway?

  • This man says he's self isolated while visiting an way province near Will Han on back home in Shanghai.

  • But there's no way to challenge the technology office building here.

  • You need to register.

  • You need to show the code to demonstrate that you're healthy.

  • So when I was read, there was no way I could go to the office and work.

  • I didn't do anything.

  • Then after two or three days, I looked and suddenly it was green.

  • I don't know why, but I think that although it's not really reasonable, it is still a preventative measure.

  • But few know exactly how their data is being used.

  • We actually looked at the back end code that the APP was running and what you could see is the moment that user gives it permission to access data.

  • It immediately sends ah function that says report info on location to police andan.

  • We looked into it and the police were a key developer of the product as well.

  • And so from that you can tell that the data is basically being sent back to to the police the moment somebody actually uses theat in some 200 Chinese cities, you now need a green coat to get on public transport.

  • Without it, you could do almost nothing.

  • No crisis should go to waste.

  • The Corona virus has given the Chinese Communist Party on opportunity to increase state surveillance, knowing that most people will be more worried about the epidemic that their privacy.

  • You know, I'm not an expert, but if the government says this is useful, I believe them.

  • A Chinese company has now developed a facial recognition technology that works even if you're wearing a mask.

  • The epidemic has enabled the Chinese authorities to normalize digital social control, something they're unlikely to relinquish.

  • Its been suggested that China's authoritarian leader lost credibility because of the initial cover up of the epidemic.

  • But in Chinese, the word for crisis is made up of two characters, danger and opportunity, Lindsay Hilsum reporting One hour earlier, I spoke to the lawyer, Nuri Turko who is from the Muslim weaker community, more than a 1,000,000 of whom are currently being held in camps by the Chinese authorities.

  • I began by asking him how the Corona virus is affecting the weaker people.

  • The weaker people have been treated as not second class citizen of third class citizen, at least as long as I have been breathing.

  • I never thought that I would be talking about the way that my parents brought me to this world as much as I have in the last 23 years, because this oppression used to be bad.

  • But now it's worse, um, in adding the current health crisis.

  • We worry that if this vice makes it to the camp, we're talking about unthinkable casualties.

  • Because a 1,000,000 Wiggins at least at least change in the United States, government estimates anything anywhere from to two million to three million Uighurs and other Turkic Muslim being detained in a modern day concentration camps.

  • So and to this day will helps organization or other international entities were not granted access to the camps to make sure that at least there's a there's a health care.

  • Let me bring you them to this this app right that is monitoring people in the effective peasant areas of China.

  • You believe that in fact it is more than simply monitoring the health conditions of the people.

  • The Chinese government before the current crisis started the health crisis virus crisis started.

  • They always the monitoring every aspect of weaker lives.

  • So any movement, every moment that you made even your door at the house as a a cure quote.

  • But this this is reaching out.

  • Beyond we goes, this'd is this is anybody in the affected areas can be issued with this app.

  • So this country has already been deeply surveilled.

  • And this new app is adding another layer for the Chinese government Xi Jinping's China to monitor their own citizens.

  • Then effectively, China has become the first digital digital dictatorship.

  • It said.

  • It's a you know, this is this is this kind of things that you read normally in the science fiction dystopia right today the Chinese government not only using these technologies to surveil its own citizens but also actively promoting that so they're not you're saying about this app is that the medical crisis that is confronting China is actually enabling them at the same time, too.

  • So deeply penetrate digitally.

  • Yes, the activities off every Chinese citizen, right?

  • That's exactly right.

  • And also it's serving the political purposes off state.

  • Last year, New York Times reported that they're about 18 countries around the world, including Germany, surprisingly already looking into the Chinese way of surveying its own citizens A to make sure that there's no political upheaval cooking up that includes a the boarding process or individual voting records.

  • But if the Chinese ambassador was sitting here right, hey would say, No, no, no.

  • What this happy is doing is enabling us to look at the medical condition off people suffering from this virus.

  • It's a wonderful thing.

  • Um, and then the same same question be asked, why other countries, uh, countries like UK, the United States, others don't use that kind of surveillance to monitor the sick people?

  • They put them in a hospital.

  • Thank you very much indeed for coming in.

the worst is over.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it