Shenzhen: Cameras on!

Shenzhen was being labeled as one of the dangerous Chinese cities because of its large migrant population. In response, the municipal government has been aggressively setting up video cameras in public space to monitor its population to curb the crime wave. 

According to the report in South China Morning Post magazine, over the past two years, more than 200,000 video cameras have been set up along main streets, in train stations, in shopping malls, in parks and along highways. And to disguise the surveillance cameras, many of them pass off as lighting columns. The cameras then beam live video to a central city database.

It is projected that within two years, Shenzhen, a city of 12 million, will have as many as 2 million surveillance cameras, the highest concentration in the world.

The deputy police chief of the city boasted that this surveillance “social experiment” was paying off with crime rates having fallen by more than 10% since 2006 when the surveillance cameras started to emerge.

Of course, the surge in the surveillance cameras in Shenzhen is only part of the Central Government’s move to monitor its vast population with latest video and internet technology, especially ahead of the Beijing Olympics, as stepped up security measures. It is worried that this surveillance campaign will only further gather up pace, not lessen, after the Olympics.

But first of all, image touring or living in a city where you are monitored everywhere. In fact, the increased surveillance has angered some residents in Shenzhen. News broke out in May that a rooftop surveillance camera set up just 3 km from the Hong Kong border, was used to scan an apartment block and shots of naked women getting in and out of bath, images fed from the camera, later splashed across a local newspaper.

This is no coincidence. For in a city or country where its people are closely watched , incidents like this - violations of privacy - are bound to happen.