China's Largest City Will Double Its Surveillance Cameras to 510,000

If you’re in the global surveillance camera business, China isn’t just the best place to manufacture your products: it’s also your target market.

Officials in China's largest city / megapolis Chongqing plan to spend $781.6 million by 2014 to install 200,000 new video surveillance cameras, bringing the total to 510,000, says a recent report on the government’s website. The report noted that "310,000 digital eyes are still not enough" to monitor crime and other social ills. Apparently, 30 percent of the 8,217 criminal cases solved by local police in the last three months were assisted by surveillance cameras.

Across the country, governments have installed more than seven million CCTV cameras, with another eight million expected by 2015; together, Beijing and Shanghai operate more than three million cameras. It’s hard to compare these figures with American cities, where a fair number of surveillance cameras are privately owned and where no reliable records are kept. A 2005 survey of Lower Manhattan by the New York Civil Liberties Union found 4,176 cameras below 14th Street, an area about one-sixth the size of the island (Greenwich Village and SoHo were the most surveilled areas, with a rate of three cameras per acre, or one for every 84 residents).

The city with the least video privacy isn’t in China however. There are 2 million closed-circuit television cameras in London. While the city’s emphasis on CCTV is legendary (remember the anti-terror Ring of Steel?), its value for solving crimes may be too: in January of last year The Daily Telegraph reported a 71 per cent fall in the number of crimes solved through CCTV in the Metropolitan Police area, from 416,000 in 2003/4 to 121,770 in 2008/9.

What’s also significant about those numbers (besides what they may tell us about the effectiveness of CCTV cameras for solving crimes) is how they were obtained: through a UK Freedom of Information Act request. That kind of request – or anything like it – is practically untenable in China; accordingly, I’ll take a British lens over a Chinese lens any day.

And yet, as I discovered living in China for two years, hearing tales of secret recording devices in bathrooms and in email, staring up at the skinny masts that dot Tiananmen Square and do not just hold lamps alone. The lack of honesty and transparency, combined with command economy strength, lends a sinisterness to the Chinese approach, even if it’s not necessarily sinister.

Not as sinister but still a little bit: Since 2006, all nightclubs in New York City are required to have security cameras posted at their entrances and exits.

But more sinister: Back in Beijing, a hot-off-the-presses report on the city government Web site outlined plans to spend $845,000 to install video cameras and audio recorders in more than 2,100 movie theaters, karaoke bars and other entertainment venues. The goal, the Web site stated, is to "directly and effectively monitor" the content of performances on behalf of various government agencies. And probably not because they’re looking for fakes.

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New York Times

Naomi Klein’s foray into the world of Chinese surveillance manufacturers and no longer visible on USA Today’s website, but you can read a Q&A about it.