How China Keeps Tabs on Foreigners | Hacker News Reader

How China Keeps Tabs on Foreigners

nytimes.com

49 pointsadriand24 comments

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Free link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/02/world/asia/china-surveill...

not free

Works for me in another browser.

The article sticks to factual information.

To dispel the idea that the information may be fake or some low-skill demo site, they have verified that 6 of the people cited are real.

There is no written fear-mongering.

IMO, the main question a reader might have is "is this real?" Given the lack of puffery, my guess is yes.

Agreed. I could be biased here but it seems to me that, to much greater degree than I would have expected, criticism of China is held to a uniquely escalated standard for factual verification, and met with a lot of whataboutism non-sequiturs (including a couple in this thread already). So I appreciate the high reporting standards that go into work like this to minimize potential distractions.

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.

https://archive.is/iBFai

Impressive.

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.

China is so bad, devil, polluting, human right violating, US election interfering!

It's not a zero sum argument.

oh yea, let me run to the nytimes for commentary on china. I'm sure it is neutral and very much well informed.

think of it more as the orchestra of fear, uncertainty and doom, with many many idivdual players, but all drummers, with the same drum kit, so right now they are playing, Iran, iran ,IRAN, china, russia,china ,china, india, as the main rythim, with the constant smashing and banging on, sex, sex, sports, sex, politics, foriegn disater,money sex, religion,money, fame, money,sex CRIME CRIME CRIME. and every friday they go, pope! if someone got inspired it could be turned into a real time news driven drum machine thing, and instead of actauly listening or watching, a given feed, just listen to the resulting reduction to the big fud band.

> news driven drum machine

An "8 oh H8" if you will, I'm sure it's already an EDM sub-genre!

And is it your view that, in contrast, the news media in China is highly responsible?

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

> centuries long attempts to destabilise, enslave, collinise, and exploit

China violently annexed Tibet in the 1950s. Trying to pretend there is a moral gradient is revealing.

You are playing the generic tangent game here. I wish I could replicate how PP makes his points, but here I think he doesn't give it enough credit.

US (& even its allies) have been portrayed to be welcoming, or at least less unwelcoming. than China, which too have had an inbred commitment to hospitality . to the average foreigner. The reality on the ground is generally the opposite. Chinese law enforcement (especially urban) is mostly hands-off, aloof. The powers behind the scenes have different ideas, but they have limited influence on how things play out in everyday detail. This is the same in the US but NYT feel like it is in their interest to muddy the waters.

Vibes are a big part of why I admittedly despise the [soft-elitist] centre (left and right) in the US (& "North-Central Europe[0]"). These inaccurate vibes promulgated by leftleaning "elite humanist" media have for the longest time (250 years?) "quietly" enabled overzealous foreign interventions

[why can't they just do that world-policing in the manner of Chinese "Public Safety"? Brandishing weapons as an after-thought?]

They are waking up to their own hubris and ignorance though, thanks to the polarising situation in the ME. Not quickly enough. Congress is now weak because of these errors of character

[0]https://youtu.be/_qYg4DXwdcs

> You are playing the generic tangent game here

Nope. I'm calling out evil where it resides.

> US (& even its allies) have been portrayed to be welcoming

Balance of power. If you're Canada, right now, balancing America with Chinese power is favourable.

> These inaccurate vibes promulgated by leftleaning "elite humanist" media

The media environment is almost orthogonal to military and geopolitcal decisionmaking. (For folks who only consume ad-supported media, sure–the line may be impossible to delinate. If you have any decisionmaking authority in these areas, you or someone else is paying for you to have better information than TikTok or whatever.)

>I'm calling out evil where it resides.

I disagree but imho this is a much deeper issue that should be left to a later time-- I have to think about it. Very similar to "is (abstract) psychological projection moral"? Tolerating paranoia and other personal but also culture-wide psycho-emotional issues[0] ? Those are deeper than the question of whether that kind of evil is still entrenched in CCP policy. Which is still worth thinking about, but I don't find relevant to this context. There are many other issues that are immediately actionable _and_ tied to those deeper questions. I try to learn from Mamdani in that regard. Idealism.. but also pragmatism (thanks metalman!! As always).. and a huge serving of listening to everyone

>For folks who only consume ad-supported media..

Unfortunately, most Congress people seem to not meet these basic criteria. Again, I disagree, but NYT seem not more trustworthy than TikTok-- where ads are the message? I blame the declining quality of journalists hired at that place (I'm personally glad you submit more FT and WSJ!! Nominally finance papers have higher default standards it seems)

[0] more bi-partisan than they seem (& I'm sure China has their own version of this one. I won't _declare_ that it's universal tho (some Nordics/Greenland?))

https://phys.org/news/2026-08-rhetoric-metoo-focused-violenc...

the very little known detail is that Tibet engaged in armed resistance and killed Chinese soldiers useing US weapons that somehow mysteriously ended up in some monks hands, which fits in with the destabilise part of my point. we could get into the whole back story, up to including how the yuan dynasty emperor granted the title "dalai" to a certain Tibeten lama, and I could then detail my own personal dilema of having a Mongol ethnic background, and how Chinas repression of non han in "China" effects me. there are a lot of facts, and perhaps an even greater number of conclusions, but pragmatism is still the strongest force.

any real arguments?

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.

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