How China Exports its Totalitarian Ideology to the Rest of the World
The CCP: coming to your neighborhood very soon.
By Uzay Bulut
Rev. Bob Fu was a former student leader during the Tiananmen Square democracy movement in 1989. He was a house church leader in Beijing until he and his wife, Bochun “Heidi” Cai, were imprisoned in 1996. In 1997 he was exiled to the U.S. In 2002, he founded ChinaAid in Philadelphia to promote religious freedom and rule of law in China.
Fu has since been raising awareness regarding the totalitarian regime of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and how it affects the international community while striving to help persecuted minorities and prisoners of conscience in his country of birth.
In a recent interview with CBN News, Fu calls China “a real police state.” He says that facial recognition cameras are used to track every move of every individual in China. “There are two face recognition cameras following each citizen everywhere in China,” he says.
In a comprehensive report, journalist Alfred NG also confirms:
“China’s facial recognition system logs nearly every single citizen in the country, with a vast network of cameras across the country. A database leak in 2019 gave a glimpse of how pervasive China’s surveillance tools are — with more than 6.8 million records from a single day, taken from cameras positioned around hotels, parks, tourism spots and mosques, logging details on people as young as 9 days old…
Chinese officials have used surveillance tools to publicly shame people wearing sleepwear in public, calling it ‘uncivilized behavior.’
The punishing of these minor offenses is by design, surveillance experts said. The threat of public humiliation through facial recognition helps Chinese officials direct over a billion people toward what it considers acceptable behavior, from what you wear to how you cross the street.
‘The idea is that the authorities are trying to put in place comprehensive surveillance and behavioral engineering on a mass scale,’ said Maya Wang, a senior researcher on China at the Human Rights Watch. ‘The authorities want to create a kind of society that would be very easy for them to manage.’
The idea that China’s facial recognition would automatically put your name and photo on a billboard for jaywalking and privately text you a fine instills fear in people to behave a certain way, Wang said.”
China’s surveillance tech is fast spreading globally. Arjun Kharpal, China Tech Correspondent of CNBC, reported in 2019:
“The world’s second-largest economy has built a vast surveillance state comprised of millions of cameras powered by facial recognition software. The devices, perched on lamp posts and outside buildings and streets, are able to recognize individuals.
Some of China’s most valuable technology firms have been involved in such projects across the country. But this technology is now being exported as the nation’s technology firms expand their global footprint.
Chinese tech companies — particularly Huawei, Hikvision, Dahua, and ZTE — supply artificial intelligence surveillance technology in 63 countries, according to a September report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank. Of those nations, 36 have signed onto China’s massive infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative, the report said, adding that Huawei supplies technology to the highest number of countries.
Some of these so-called ‘smart city’ projects, which include surveillance technologies, are underway in Western countries, particularly in Europe, including Germany, Spain and France, according to analysis by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).
Samantha Hoffman, a fellow at ASPI’s Cyber Centre, cited laws in China that appear to compel Chinese firms to hand over data to the government, if asked.
Hoffman said what matters is who has access to the data that is collected.
‘If it’s a Chinese company like Huawei, and that … data goes back to China and can be used by the party in whatever way that it chooses.’
‘I think we don’t even quite understand the full scale of the problem that we are dealing with when it comes to Chinese surveillance technology when it is exported. It’s not just that other regimes can use it in similar ways, it’s that when it’s exported the (Chinese Communist) Party can attach its interests as well,’ Hoffman added.”
In 2019, an ASPI report highlighted other concerns from China exporting its surveillance tech, including being able to undermine democracies, get an edge on new technologies and in military areas.
“You know, domestically and globally, it (Chinese Communist Party) plans to use technology as [a] way to both protect and expand its power,” Hoffman said. “Globally, the implications of that are that the party is trying to reshape global governance in a way that … will ensure the party’s power.”
Meanwhile, since last year, there has been a huge influx of Chinese citizens who are entering illegally the United States from the southern border.
“The number of migrants arriving at the southern border is unprecedented,” reported the CBS News on February 4. The fastest growing group among them are Chinese migrants.
Last year [in 2023], U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 37,000 Chinese citizens were apprehended crossing illegally from Mexico into the U.S.
Pastor Bob Fu, founder of ChinaAid, confirms these reports:
“I was teaching English in the Communist Party School before I was arrested in Beijing as an underground Church leader, so I know how the communists operate. I mean we know that they will not lose any chance of taking advantage of this open border policy, so in the past 12 months or so over 25,000 military aged Chinese men crossed the border illegally from Mexico to Texas.
I’m very sure some of them were deliberately sent by the Chinese Communist Party security apparatus as sleeping cells, as terrorists ,as a future kind of disturbers or instigators. So something has to be done to stop this [open border policy].”
Fu notes that the Communist Party is purchasing hundreds of thousands of acres of land in the US including the land next to the military base in the state of Texas.
Senator Lois Kolkhorst proposed in 2023 legislation SB 147 relating to the purchase of or acquisition of title to real property by certain aliens or foreign entities. Fu shared his testimony regarding the bill:
“The CCP not only poses existential threats to our freedom and way of life but also is actively exporting its threats transactionally in our soils. Emboldened by their economic power, the Chinese government seeks to weaken the United States through espionage and surveillance. They maintain control of Chinese citizens (work/education visa holders, lawful permanent residents/“green card” holders) and former Chinese citizens living in the U.S. through their embassy, consulates and overseas police stations. They monitor and harass those in the U.S. and threaten to penalize their families in China.
The CCP dug its teeth deep into Texas long before anyone knew about overseas Chinese police stations. They financially infiltrated our great universities and institutions. They have been and wish to continue buying land in our state, particularly property near our military bases and other sensitive facilities and infrastructure. Any sensible person sees through this agenda and any effort against this bill as insanity.
We cannot allow the CCP to build its physical bases on Texas soil any more than we can tolerate CCP spy balloons hovering in our sovereign country’s air space surveilling our military bases and strategic nuclear installations.
As they seek to steal our military and industrial secrets, they also collect information to exert control over individuals by monitoring all activity, looking for those who can be bribed or extorted. This is not a hypothetical notion: from September to November 2020, the CCP organized groups to harass and stalk my family home in Midland. A favorite tactic of the CCP is to contact Chinese individuals living in the United States and threaten their family members back in China unless they do as the CCP says.
It’s time for fellow Texans to wake up to the fact that the CCP and its established malignant groups have already penetrated deep into our society.”
In China, Fu says, even the communist party members and officials are neither free or safe.
“Even the members of the communist party are being ransomed, imprisoned, or forced to commit suicide. Hundreds of senior leaders end up in prison or killed, so nobody feels safe in the Communist Party regime,” Fu explains.
The totalitarian ideology of the CCP includes instilling and exploiting fear to create discipline and generally control every step its population takes. Chinese President Xi Jinping has long engaged in efforts to try to export his dictatorial methods where it is possible. Perhaps this ideology was best described by George Orwell, who wrote: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” Such an oppressive regime based on fear, punishment, and total control of human behavior would bring an end to human freedom. The international community should stand up to this ideology that virtually enslaves humanity by using seemingly benign methods including technology.