From beaches to ski slopes, photos show how cameras keep an eye on all of China

The Chinese government has equipped the country with the world’s largest network of surveillance cameras.

Some cameras rotate, ensuring a wider view of public squares. Others scan the license plates of passing cars, allowing police to track vehicles in real time. At night, cameras flash across China’s cities, lights flash in the streets and corners.

Over the past few decades, the Chinese government has launched a series of high-tech surveillance projects aimed at bringing the entire country under surveillance, including “Sky Net” and “Golden Shield”.

The latest such project is called the “Xueliang Project” or Sharp Eyes, a reference to a quote from the founder of Communist China. Mao Zedong“The people have sharp eyes,” he once said, urging the eviction of neighbors who opposed socialist values.

AP investigation found American The companies largely designed and built China’s surveillance state, which is playing a far greater role in enabling human rights abuses than previously known. The AP found that the US government repeatedly allowed, and even actively helped, US companies to sell technology to Chinese police, government and surveillance companies.

The cameras linked to China are linked together into policing systems that allow authorities to track and control anyone in the country, often targeting perceived threats to the state such as dissidents, religious believers or ethnic minorities. The instructions of are being followed Beijing To ensure “100 percent coverage” in key public areas, authorities have installed facial-recognition cameras across the country, including in unlikely places:

ski slopes.

beach.

Remote country roads.

Great Wall of China.

Visitors to Beijing are greeted by a series of cameras, with a screen below announcing: “The Amazing China Journey Starts Here!”

Sometimes, entire neighborhoods have been demolished and partially rebuilt to make it easier for cameras to monitor. historical quarter of XinjiangThe ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar, once a maze-like city of winding streets, was demolished and rebuilt with wide passageways and thousands of cameras that light up at night.

Analysts say China now has more cameras in its cities, streets and villages than in the rest of the world – roughly one for every two people.

According to officials, the goal is clear: exhaustive surveillance in every corner of the country, with “no blind spots” to be found.

This is a photo gallery curated by AP Photo editors.