I visited China’s largest surveillance tech expo with @QianerLiu this week held once every two years in Shenzhen - “the world security capital.” A thread & our story about China’s latest new surveillance craze: emotion recognition on.ft.com/2PyJhFv 1/ 
A policing expert and party cadre from Xinjiang’s public security bureau told us they have started using emotion recognition to identity criminal suspects. He also said they work with major Chinese tech companies like Alibaba, Tencent, Hikvision & Dahua 2/
Reps from Baidu & Megvii who we spoke to at their booths said emotion recognition tech is being used by the government mostly in public security bureaus & schools but still doesn’t work very well 3/
Huawei had a very strong presence at the expo & it and other Chinese internet giants which are highly competitive in AI/5G are posing a growing challenge to security equipment industry incumbents like Hikvision and Dahua 4/
The expo was utterly overwhelming, I must have only seen a fraction of it. Every industry I could think of was there - digital mining, smart schools & healthcare & electricity grids & courts, intelligent dormitories, etc 5/
I became obsessed with the various smart prison systems on display. One rep told me prisoners’ garment output increased by 10-20% at a prison factory after they installed the company’s surveillance system. They also use “smart beds” to monitor prisoners’ health 6/
I was shocked by the hidden cameras in the bridge of these glasses & the right side of the 中 character in this name tag. The booth rep told me it was old hardware & I was out of date about the latest tech developments & they can hide cameras in basically anything 7/
Research institutes of China’s ministry of public security displayed equipment that reps said can read all info on both Chinese & foreign phones & computers. They declined to comment on how they got people to unlock their devices 8/
Most people I spoke to at the expo were very chatty & excited to share the latest tech devs, except when I asked big brands about the impact of the US-China trade war. Many unanswered qs inc how much of this tech is actually being used, how & how ppl feel about its impact 9/9
