Chinese surveillance technology maker Hikvision Digital Technology Co. is accused of developing a "smart campus" system capable of alerting faculty when it detects students suspected of being Muslim.
U.S.-based research group IPVM published a report on Monday revealing that Hikvision had won the tender for the $9 million project for Minjiang University in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, in July of last year.
The world's largest producer of surveillance equipment, Hikvision is a state-owned firm with connections to the Chinese military. In 2019, the U.S. Industry and Security Bureau added the company to its Entity List of trade restrictions for believed involvement in Beijing's alleged repression of Muslim Uyghurs in the western region of Xinjiang—which the Biden White House and the Trump administration before it labeled "genocide."
The "smart campus" tender, which Newsweek has independently verified, lists the types of details the project listed as requiring monitoring.
Facial recognition tech and data drawn from student IDs would compile information on details about students' friends, significant others, favorite haunts, routines and "dramatic" changes in behavior observed over time.
Per the tender's specifications, the system would also feature analyses of students that belong to ethnic minorities. That could be achieved by tracking records of students' meals, according to the document.
Newsweek has reached out to Hikvision and Minjiang University for comment.
A "fasting month warning" automatically kicks in when students exhibit behavior consistent with Ramadan, a Muslim holiday that requires fasting each day from dawn to sunset for a month. It can be deduced that Muslims are meant to be the target of this alert because no other minority group in China takes part in a monthlong fasting period.
In statement posted on networking site LinkedIn, Hikvision denied it had developed technology for that purpose. It acknowledged that one of its subsidiaries had been the general contractor but stressed that it does not "offer ethnic minority recognition or analysis technology in any of our product offerings."
Hikvision added that it and Minjiang University had jointly "examined the conflicts between the accused features and general human rights principles" throughout the development of the smart campus. Thus, the "accused features" were not included in the product, the statement said.
An archived Chinese government announcement revealed by IPVM confirms that all of the requirements outlined in the tender were to be met as specified.
Hikvision said that it would "reach out to provide clarification on this matter," without specifying the entity to which it was reaching out.
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Micah McCartney is a reporter for Newsweek based in Taipei, Taiwan. He covers U.S.-China relations, East Asian and Southeast Asian ... Read more
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