The surveillance technology is just one example of the proliferation of ‘predictive policing’ in the country. By RFA Investigative and Gulchehra Hoja for RFA UyghurJune
When Tik Tok arrived in the United States in 2017, it was framed as a harmless cultural export: a platform for dances, jokes, and viral creativity. But for anyone who had seen China’s surveillance state up close, its arrival felt ominous. Tik Tok is owned by ByteDance, a company deeply entangled with the Chinese Communist Party’s system of mass surveillance—one that has enabled the detention of up to 1.8 million Uyghurs in Xinjiang. While the West debates whether concerns about Tik Tok amount to xenophobia, the app has already played a quieter role: suppressing information about a genocide, normalizing authoritarian power, and testing how easily human rights abuses can be made invisible in plain sight.
Editor’s note: This story was originally published on Jan. 7, 2014. Please scroll to the end of this article for a response that South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent GlobalPost on Jan. 9. 2014. GlobalPost stands by the piece in its entirety.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Dec 9, 2014
SEOUL, South Korea — It’s yet another booming market that China dominates: electric shock shields, spiked batons, electric shock stun batons, thumb cuffs, neck restraints and the like.
By Geoffrey Cain
PRI’s The World
Dec 8, 2014
What to read next:
Geoffrey Cain on Investigative Journalism, Authoritarian Power, and The Perfect Police State | In a wide-ranging conversation with Jennifer Grossman, CEO of The Atlas Society, investigative journalist Geoffrey Cain reflects on years spent reporting inside some of the world’s most restrictive regimes — and on the research behind his book The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey into China’s Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future.
For years, Tim Cook insisted Apple could change China from the inside. Instead, China changed Apple.
The latest evidence? Apple spent billions developing cutting-edge electric vehicle battery technology with Chinese automaker BYD, only to watch its innovations become the cornerstone of BYD’s rise to global electric vehicle dominance. Apple walked away with nothing. China walked away with everything.
This isn’t just another story about corporate research and development gone wrong. It’s a cautionary tale about how even America’s most valuable company has become trapped in China’s web of technological control — and how that web is about to tighten even further.