China using advanced 'Data Surveillance Systems'

Washington/Beijing – The US daily ‘The Washington Post’ has claimed that China’s ruling communist regime gathers information from Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. The US daily says it is being used to identify anti-China targets abroad. The issue has come to the fore after studying and analysing documents related to various projects of the Chinese government. The Washington Post also claimed that the information is being used by the Chinese military, police and other government agencies.

Moreover, Chinese government media and other agencies have developed various software and programs. Besides, other Chinese government agencies also use the software and programs developed by one agency for their work. It also includes software that monitors the posts of foreign journalists and academicians on social media. The Central Propaganda Department procured software and programs, which is part of China’s communist regime.

A Chinese analyst has claimed that the information accumulated from social media will make it possible for China’s communist regime to find underground networks of its opponents, monitor them, and warn of ‘trends’ that could jolt the government’s interests. It has been exposed that China’s Central Propaganda Department has also bought some social media accounts abroad. Earlier, the Chinese regime had developed a large-scale mechanism to know the public opinion domestically. The communist regime began to develop such a system after the 1989 incident in Tiananmen Square.

In 2014, a Chinese state-run daily reported that more than two million people in the country were working for the government as ‘public opinion analysts.’ In 2018, a government news agency claimed that the government was spending billions of dollars on a campaign run by the government news agency to find out and change opinions. According to The Washington Post, the same model is now being used by the Chinese communist regime outside the country, using data surveillance systems and social media. Analysts claim that if China intends to implement the model used domestically on the global level, it will pose a big threat.

There were indications that social networking platforms had taken cognisance of the campaign launched by the Chinese regime. In June 2020, Twitter shut down 23,000 accounts linked to the communist regime.