How China Keeps Tabs on Foreigners

The logging of just everyday activity is interesting. Visit a store, what door they went in. If some folks had a meal together.

God forbid you make acquaintance of someone who makes some less desirable choices, according to the government.

To try to contribute some real discussion of the actual content of the article, the data revealed in the database is impressively organized, almost indulgently futuristic in its graphic design choices, and the way they source photos in particular is quite resourceful. Anything from immigrations customs photos to photos of foreigners taken from traffic cameras, markets and businesses. There's extensive records of the types of locations people travel to, that seems to use facial recognition in cameras to put together a complete linear record of everywhere a person goes. Other interesting details are keeping track of subjects people have studied, and attempting to map out their social relationships, if they're from "key countries" or might in any way be associated with political activism that they want to monitor.

It looks like this one might not have actually been used and it seems like the biggest lesson that the example demonstrates is that it's just one of many tool sets in a sprawling surveillance ecosystem and there's a bunch of private companies that vie the business of police and other government institutions across China. That sprawl makes leaks like this one more possible.

Sometimes it said that "none of this is a surprise", but I think revealing details in specific ways turns it from a slogan into a concrete reality, and gives a sharper picture of the causality and the capabilities, which levels up our ability to understand in ways that aren't appreciated when it's just spoken about as a generality that we all assume to be the case.

The one thing I would personally flag is how frequently people were sarcastically dismissive of the idea that Tiktok was doing anything useful with this data. But given how extensive and opportunistic their aggregation of data is to profile foreigners, it's easy to see how, say, mapping out the global support networks of democratic activists sympathetic to (say) Taiwan, could bolster and empower them to act through their extradition partnerships and be part of the data that could potentially even support a hot war in Taiwan.

I use Tiktok as much as the next person, and go through cycles of installing and uninstalling it from my phone, but I didn't think but shared cultural exercise of young people from Western countries sarcastically bidding adieu to their Chinese spys was coming from a particularly well-informed place. And when the data is laid down in the concrete way it's harder to mentally inhabit the contradiction of (1) there's no surprise here and (2) there's nothing to worry about.

There was a time 20 or even 10 years ago where none of this would be controversial (that i,s the significance of reporting on a topic like this) but in 2026, at least in some spaces, it seems practically contrarian.

So where do you go for reliable information on China? And what is your overall view of its government?

Typically I agree, NYT on China is usually fear mongering, but in this case the article is very neutral and just the facts. I mean, it's the same kind of thing Palantir is selling to US and that various three letter orgs have started building, but more comprehensive (for the time being) because at least in US there is still a small amount of accountability. This is a glimpse into the future in every country that can afford it, just some countries will take a little bit longer to get there.

the contrast is that Chinese media follows the rule to never mess with brand China and act as chear leaders, oh and gently make sure no one forgets the centuries long attempts to destabilise, enslave, collinise, and exploit China by any means availible. The other relavent thing is that China has whole massive citys and regions which are all but hermeticly sealed off from the rest of the world, with NO airports or western presence whatsoever. Which reminds me of one of my many forays into ethnic grocerie stores and asking what a murky plastic bag of stuff was, from a store attendnt, upon which , he looked at me, looked at the bag in my hand, looked at me, glanced at the bag, and then responded with no "r's, "noh fo yu", and now a good many visits to stores with similar stuff later, he is still proving to be correct, and is something they do there best to be upfront and plain about, blunt, but not mean,and on another occasion bieng confronted with, "who you?, WHO YOU!" what you want! so, from my view, I have found myself in the position of explaining that I am strictly on MY side and have no particular agenda, and have found myself at some particular point, between where I was, and where I am going to be, but cant bring myself to apologise for taking up the room under my feet. and so far nobody has realy hurt me, but thinking about it, guns have been waved around, and even discharged quite a few times, though not in China, which I do think more and more of travelling through