Hikvision is the largest video surveillance company in the world. More than one out of every five surveillance cameras in the world is manufactured by Hikvision. Chances are you have one in your city or town, if not in your home.
There is only one problem—or rather two. First, Hikvision is controlled by the Chinese Communist government. Although it does not exactly advertise these facts, its controlling share belongs to China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, which is in turn controlled by the Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, an entity under the direct supervision of the CCP’s Politburo.
There have been enough cases throughout the world where data coming from Chinese-manufactured technological devices have ended up in China to raise suspects about Hikvision surveillance cameras too.
However, Hikvision got in trouble for something more specific. It is a supplier of Chinese public security, army, and intelligence services, to which it offers surveillance cameras with facial recognition functions. One of these functions is able to tell whether those captured by the cameras are Han Chinese, Uyghurs, or members of another ethnic minority.
Uyghurs were explicitly singled out in what many called “racist” software. The New York Times made the story internationally famous in 2019, with the result that Hikvision’s sales were limited, in most cases prohibiting state entities to purchase its cameras, in the United States (which in 2022 totally banned the company’s products altogether), Australia, the UK, and several other countries.
Severely hit by the sanctions, in 2022 Hikvision declared that the production of anti-Uyghur recognition software had been discontinued.
It was, unfortunately, a lie. Thanks to IPVM (Internet Protocol Video Market), a private but highly authoritative research group on video surveillance technology, we now have evidence that, while telling Western media it had removed the “racist software” from its systems, Hikvision was busy negotiating new contracts with Chinese authorities selling to them a facial recognition software that would answer the question “Whether ethnic minority: unknown, non-minority, Uyghur.” One such agreement was signed in December 2022.
By the way, Hikvision is not alone. In May 2023, “Bitter Winter” reviewed another IPVM report demonstrating that Alibaba also produces “racist software” targeting the Uyghurs.
The conclusion is simple. Both state-owned and (more or less) private Chinese companies should not be believed when they deny their involvement in human rights violations. They just lie.
I know, if you go to Amazon you will tell me that the Hikvision video surveillance camera is the cheapest available to protect your backyard, and has good reviews too.
But what the reviews do not tell you is that there is a chance that your data will end up in China.
You may not care about this but you should care about the fact that your money is supporting the racist persecution of the Uyghurs. Don’t buy Hikvision. Better still, avoid Chinese technology in general.
Massimo Introvigne is an Italian sociologist of religions who is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR). He is the author of some 70 books and the editor-in-chief of the online magazine Bitter Winter which focuses on religious liberty and human rights in China.
This article is from the online magazine Bitter Winter.
The views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of LICAS News.
