User:Lilyzzf/sandbox article one

This is my sandbox for the Mass surveillance in China article. Everything in this page is newly added by me, except a few sentences from the original article that I reorganized into the current sections.

I have added a new lead section and the History and Overview section. Under the By technique heading, I added the sections on Camera surveillance, Social credit surveillance, and a subsection in Internet surveillance. Under the By region heading, I added the sections on Tibet, Xinjiang, and Taiwan.

= Mass surveillance in China = Mass surveillance in China is the complicated network of surveillance used by the Chinese government to supervise the actions of Chinese citizens. In China, mass surveillance mainly comes from the government, though non-publicized corporate surveillance is also a possibility. There are multiple ways in which the Chinese state engages in surveillance, including Internet surveillance, camera surveillance in public, and recently the social credit surveillance. Chinese mass surveillance has witnessed an increased spending, intensity, and coverage in recent years.

History and Overview
Mass surveillance in China started to emerge in the Maoist era, after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Mao invented this mechanism of control that encompasses the entire nation and its people to strengthen his power in the newly founded country. In the early years, when technology was not yet quite developed in China, mass surveillance was realized through dissemination of information by word of mouth. Chinese people kept a watchful eye on one another and reported inappropriate behaviors that infringed upon dominant social ideals of the time.

In the late 20th century and 21st century, as a result of the Chinese economic reform, computer and Internet technology spread to China and were developed. As a result, more means of mass surveillance started to emerge. The most notable mechanisms are mass camera surveillance on the streets, Internet surveillance, and the newly invented surveillance based on social credit and identity.

Internet surveillance
This part is mainly worked on by Fangzhu Lu (User ID: FangzhuLu) in our class, as a result of our coordination and division of labor. I am adding here a specific section on Sex and Pornography surveillance on the Internet.

Sex and Pornography
Movies, books, comics, or videos involving sexually sensitive or provocative material are usually banned on Chinese Internet. The government denounces sex and porn culture and actively establishes sex education for teenagers and high school students that diverge them from developing an interest in this culture. Additionally, there are sections in China's criminal law that explicitly forbid the production, dissemination, or sale of obscene material, for which people can be imprisoned. In the 1980s, there was a campaign against "spiritual pollution," referring to sex-related content. In 2018, a Chinese erotic writer who wrote and sold a gay porn novel called Occupy online was sentenced a 10-and-a-half year jail time.

The most frequent way Chinese people get access to otherwise banned sexual material is through the Internet. Web administrators are frequently on the lookout for sexual information online and remove those information as soon as they find it. However, the number of sex-related pages are still increasing, according to research done by university professors. The government actively surveils the Internet for sex-related material and censors those information, while Chinese netizens try hard to access the information they desire to see. For example, China's Ministry of Public Security collected intelligence agents from student groups to spy on people's Internet activities. On the other hand, erotic activism arose online when government efforts at porn censorship and surveillance heightened during 2010.

Camera surveillance
The Chinese government has installed close to 200 million surveillance cameras across the country, four times as many as in the United States. According to official statistics in 2012, more than 660 of the mainland's 676 cities use surveillance systems. In Guangdong province, 1.1 million cameras were installed in 2012, with plans to increase the number to 2 million by 2015 at a predicted cost of 12.3 billion yuan. By 2020, the Chinese government expects to integrate private and public cameras, leveraging the country's technological expertise in facial recognition technology to build a nation-wide surveillance network. After taking camera shots on the streets, the government uses an artificial intelligence system and facial recognition technology to identify each person captured and create an activity profile for the person.

The facial recognition technology has its limitations. There are technological and systematic restrictions to this innovation. For example, A supervisor at an artificial intelligence firm that provides research support for this technology has stated that the system of activity profile can only look for a maximum of 1,000 people in one search. Additionally, the system cannot work 24/7, and will require reactivation in cases of extreme need.

Social credit surveillance
In connection to the previous section on camera surveillance, the Chinese government is also developing a Social Credit System that rates the trustworthiness of its citizens by analyzing their social behaviors and collecting fiscal and government data. After capturing people's activities and identifying them through facial recognition techniques, the government links their activities to this personal credit so that the information is restored in a quantifiable and measurable way. Under this "algorithmic surveillance system," people, their identity, and their actions are connected to a "citizen score." By utilizing information gathered about the citizens' activities captured by cameras and analyzing them with artificial intelligence and data mining techniques, the state calculates and updates their “citizen score" regularly. Participation in this system is currently voluntary, but will become mandatory in 2020.  As of now, many Chinese citizens have already started using the Sesame Credit created and operated by Alibaba, an E-commerce company. In fact, the Sesame Credit is designed such that people with good credit can live a more convenient life than people with low credits scores.  For instance, people with high credit scores don't need to pay deposits when checking in at hotels, or can obtain a visa to Europe more quickly than others.  On the other hand, people with low credit scores can't easily eat in restaurants, register at hotels, purchase things, or travel freely.

Tibet
The Chinese government sent groups of cadres to Tibetan villages as part of the "Benefit the Masses" campaign in 2012. The purpose was to improve service and living quality in Tibet, and to educate the locals about the importance of social stability and adherence to the Party. The local people were also supervised in order to prevent uprisings from taking place.

In Tibet, users of mobile phones and the Internet must identify themselves by name. In June 2013, the government reported that the program had reached full realization. An official said that "the real-name registration is conducive to protecting citizens' personal information and curbing the spread of detrimental information."

In 2018, during the Saga Dawa (the holy fourth month for Tibetan Buddhists) in Lhasa, the government enforced stricter rules than before, according to Global Times. People were also discouraged from engaging in religious practices in this month. When they did, they were supervised closely.

As a way of protesting, some Tibetans engage in self-immolation, which is a tradition of protest against Chinese control that goes a long way back to the mid-20th century.

Xinjiang
In Xinjiang and especially its capital city, Urumqi, there are security checkpoints and identification stations almost everywhere. People need to show their ID cards and have their faces scanned by cameras at a security station before entering a supermarket, a hotel, a train station, a highway station, and others. The ratio of police officers stationed in Xinjiang is higher than elsewhere, as compared to the amount of population. This strict enforcement of security checks is partly a response to the separatist movement in 2009 associated with some Muslim Uighurs. Additionally, the cameras on streets are denser there than elsewhere, and people's activities are captured and matched to their identity though the facial recognition technology discussed above. There are in fact 40,000 facial recognition cameras around. The information collected through the cameras are matched to individual profiles that include previously collected biometric data, such as DNA samples and voice samples. People are rated a level of "trustworthiness" based on their profiles, which also takes into account their familial relations and social connections. These levels include "trustworthy," "average," and "untrustworthy."

Xinjiang residents, especially those from the Muslim Uighurs ethnic group, are not allowed to practice certain religious acts. They are also more actively and strictly monitored by "surveillance apps, voice printing, and facial recognition cameras." The government has set up re-education camps in Xinjiang for the local people to improve their compliance. People in the re-education camps are usually closely watched by guards and are not allowed to contact people outside the facilities, including family and friends. They learn about Mandarin Chinese characters and the rules they need to follow in those camps.

The security spending in Xinjiang ballooned in 2017, witnessing an increase of 90% to $8.52 billion, as compared to 2016.

Taiwan
The "SkyNet" technology used by the Chinese government to monitor the population through pervasive cameras covers everyone appearing under the camera network. Taiwanese officials informed Taiwanese people living in mainland China about the increasing prevalence of surveillance on their activities. This has become an heightened concern since China started offering residence cards and a full national status to people from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau who were living in the mainland. As a result of Beijing's initiative, individuals such as students and workers can apply for a residence permit after residing in mainland China for six months. This policy extends social service and medical benefits to them, who now enjoy those services in the same way as other Chinese. Taiwanese authorities are worried about surveillance on Taiwanese because of the residence cards issued to them, which provide their identity to the Chinese government and subject them to the same kind of surveillance regime composed of cameras, facial recognition technology, and social credit.