China’s Surveillance State Has Tens of Millions of New Targets

Foreign Policy 
October 21, 2019
By Emile Dirks, Sarah Cook

So-called key individuals, from drug addicts to religious believers, are singled out in police databases.

One evening in the summer of 2017, local police in China made a surprise inspection of a small private language school, checking the visas of all non-Chinese attendees. Among those present was a foreign doctoral student, who had left his passport at his hotel. “Not to worry,” said the officer. “What’s your name?” The officer took out a handheld device and entered the student’s name. “Is this you?” Displayed on the screen was the researcher’s name, his passport number, and the address of his hotel.

This kind of incident is common in Xinjiang, where China has extensively deployed technology against Muslim minorities. But this episode took place in Yunnan province, near China’s southern border with Myanmar. In fact, public security bureaus—the network of agencies in China that deal with domestic security and intelligence—across the country are using electronic databases coupled with handheld tools to keep track of certain categories of people. These “key individuals,” as they are officially known, range from paroled criminals and users of drugs to foreigners, petitioners, and religious believers.

A review of dozens of local government notices, procurement tenders, and promotional material from Chinese companies indicates that the use of such technologies both predates and extends beyond the current crackdown in Xinjiang, affecting tens of millions of people all over China.

As the Chinese Communist Party identifies new targets for repression under the increasingly authoritarian rule of President Xi Jinping and Chinese companies expand their sales of surveillance equipment abroad, the scale and impact of these databases are likely to increase in the coming years.

The Ministry of Public Security’s 2007 Key Population Management Guidelines define key individuals broadly as those “suspected of threatening national security or public order.” Some specific groups are listed, including serious criminal offenders, people released from prisons or labor camps, and users of illegal drugs.

The Ministry of Public Security’s 2007 Key Population Management Guidelines define key individuals broadly as those “suspected of threatening national security or public order.” Some specific groups are listed, including serious criminal offenders, people released from prisons or labor camps, and users of illegal drugs.

In practice, a far wider range of people are treated as key individuals by China’s security apparatus, according to an examination of more than 70 local government notices issued in 26 of China’s 34 provinces and administrative regions between 2011 and 2019. Frequently mentioned categories of key individuals include petitioners, members of banned religious groups like Falun Gong, people with mental illnesses, and those involved in “stability maintenance” or “terrorist” activities—two terms that are often applied to rights activists, protesters, and members of ethnic minority groups such as Xinjiang’s Uighurs.

As the number of populations under surveillance has grown, so too has the collection of their personal data.As the number of populations under surveillance has grown, so too has the collection of their personal data. The origins of today’s massive police databases extend back to the introduction of machine-readable “second-generation” national ID cards in the mid-2000s. The cards allowed personal data to be stored electronically and shared easily among branches of the Ministry of Public Security.


In 2006, one of the first nationwide databases of key individuals was launched: the Dynamic Control System. With records on more than 2 million registered users of drugs, the Dynamic Control System was an early example of ID-based location tracking and biometric data collection. It alerts public security offices whenever registered individuals use their national ID numbers to conduct computer-based transactions.

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