China's ruling Communist Party is using artificial intelligence to turbocharge the surveillance and control of its 1.4 billion citizens, with the technology reaching further into daily life, predicting public demonstrations and monitoring the moods of prison inmates, according toa new report.
Many of these systems are already well-documented – from the country's army of online censors maintaining its Great Firewall, to the surveillance cameras ubiquitous on almost every street and block across urban China.
But the report released Monday by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) details how the government's AI tools, used to "automate censorship, enhance surveillance and pre‑emptively suppress dissent," havegrown more sophisticatedin the past two years – against the backdrop of a deepening US-China tech rivalry.
"China is harnessing AI to make its existing systems of control far more efficient and intrusive. AI lets the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) monitor more people, more closely, with less effort," said Nathan Attrill, a report co-author and senior China analyst at ASPI, which is partially funded by the Australian and other foreign governments.
"In practice, AI has become the backbone of a far more pervasive and predictive form of authoritarian control."
The authors added that the implications are both broad and deep – allowing Beijingeven greater controlin policing its population and managing the flow of information, as well as strengthening its power overseas as a global exporter of surveillance technology.
Beijing hasinvested hundreds of billions of dollarsinto AI-related businesses,making big stridesin research and development – despite the US working to restrict the supply of high-power AI chips to China.
The public has embraced the technology, too;a 2024 surveyby global research group IPSOS found that Chinese respondents were far more excited and optimistic about AI than their peers across 32 countries.
Even Chinese leader Xi Jinping has highlighted the importance of AI in the country's evolving internet policy. At a November meeting with top CCP officials, he emphasized that AI "presents challenges to cyberspace governance while offering new avenues of support," according toChinese state media– which the ASPI report claims are euphemisms for maintaining the regime's power and stability.
ASPI's findings aren't entirely novel; otherresearchersandinstitutesaround the world have previously issuedsimilar reportsand warnings. Chinese leaders have spoken openly about their AI ambitions, some of which are shared by other countries. And it's not yet a nationwide standard – local governments in big urban hubs with the existing digital infrastructure, like Beijing or Shanghai, are experimenting with AI in ways that rural provinces or smaller cities can't yet.
But "many of the government's intentions and policies are now becoming a reality," said Xiao Qiang, a research scientist studying internet freedom at the University of California, Berkeley.
And, he added, "the report is showing us the clear indicator that China is heading to the direction (of using AI nationwide) … As soon as the digital infrastructure is ready, those things are being implemented."
AI in the criminal justice system
With AI now used in some places for policing, court proceedings and prison operations, the report claims the technology could eventually become integrated in every step of China's already-opaque criminal justice system.
Monitoring begins with China'svast network of surveillance cameras. While there aren't comprehensive statistics on the number of cameras in the country, estimates go up to 600 million cameras across China, according to the report. That's roughly 3 cameras for every 7 people.
Like in many other countries, these cameras increasingly have AI capabilities like facial recognition and location tracking. For instance, documents from one Shanghai district detail plans for AI-powered cameras and drones to "automatically discover and intelligently enforce the law," including potentially alerting police to crowd gatherings, the report found.
China's Supreme Court has alsourged all courtsto "develop a competent artificial intelligence system by 2025," which can be used in various legal proceedings including trials and administrative work, the report said. In one example, a Shanghai AI system can reportedly recommend whether judges and prosecutors should arrest or grant suspended sentences to criminal suspects and defendants.
Finally, there is a push for more "smart prisons" where AI tools can track prisoners' locations and behaviors.In one prison, facial recognition cameras monitored prisoners' expressions, flagging them for intervention if they seemed angry. At adrug rehabilitation center, prisoners underwent AI-assisted therapy, delivered through virtual reality (VR) headsets.
"A defendant caught through the help of AI-based surveillance and tried in an AI-assisted courtroom may then be sentenced based on the recommendation of an AI system to a 'smart prison' … incorporating extensive smart technology," the report said.
China's State Council Information Office and Ministry of Justice have not responded to CNN's request for comments. They have previously criticized ASPI for receiving funding from US government agencies and claimed it has "no credibility."
These smart technologies can help prevent crime and make Chinese cities far safer, Xiao acknowledged – but "because of the political system, the same technology can be used, and actually is being used, (for) political persecution."
China's court system, which answers to the CCP, already boasts a conviction rate above 99%.
Xiao pointed to several vulnerable groups who may be further targeted – including religious and ethnic minorities like Uyghurs, and political dissidents, who have long faced government repression.
Chinese companies, backed and funded by the central government, are now also working to develop large language models (LLMs) for minority languages – including Uyghur, Tibetan, Mongolian and Korean – for better "monitoring and controlling communications in those languages," the report found.
These LLMs could potentially be used to surveil what minority communities are posting and sharing, and to manipulate what information they receive, according to Xiao and the report.
The role of China's tech giants
The report also highlighted the role of China's biggest tech companies, calling them "key enablers and enforcers of the CCP's online content censorship policies."
These companies were always required to follow the central government's content regulations – but have now become key figures developing censorship technologies and selling them to smaller companies around the country, sometimes cooperating with authorities on criminal cases, the report said.
For instance, ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok,censors content on Douyin, the version of the appprimarily used in China– blocking or downvoting politically sensitive content.
Tencent, a social media and gaming giant, uses AI to monitor user behavior and assign them "risk scores" based on their online activity, including penalties for violations across social media, chat groups and other communication platforms, the report said.
Search engine Baidu sells a number of content moderation tools and has cooperated with government agencies in more than 100 criminal cases, primarily regarding fraud and cybercrime, the report said.
"Online, AI enables real-time censorship and public-opinion shaping: platforms use automated moderation, sentiment analysis and recommendation algorithms to downrank criticism and push party-aligned narratives," said Attrill, the report co-author.
CNN has reached out to all three companies for comment.
The growing ecosystem of Chinese AI surveillance and censorship tools, which small and medium enterprises are developing in-house as well, also has global implications, the report warned – with other authoritarian countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia also using AI to surveil their populations.
"Chinese LLMs these days are dominant open-weights models, which means that many other countries – their companies, their research units – might use the Chinese model because it's cheap, it's free," said Xiao.
But "if you use those models, you're fundamentally sitting on their platforms," he added. "The censorship and the surveillance and the control, the influence, come with it."
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China's ruling Communist Party is using artificial intelligence to turbocharge the surveillance and control of its 1.4 billion citizens...
