Delegates from law enforcement across the world descended this week on a port city in eastern China showcasing the work of dozens of local firms, several linked to repression in the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
China is one of the most surveilled societies on Earth, with millions of CCTV cameras scattered across cities and facial recognition technology widely used in everything from day-to-day law enforcement to political repression.
Its police serve a dual purpose: keeping the peace and cracking down on petty crime while also ensuring challenges to the ruling Communist Party are swiftly stamped out.
During the opening ceremony in Lianyungang, Jiangsu province, China's police minister lauded Beijing's training of thousands of police from abroad over the last 12 months -- and promised to help thousands more over the next year.
An analyst said this was "absolutely a sign that China aims to export" its policing.
"Beijing is hoping to normalise and legitimise its policing style and... the authoritarian political system in which it operates," Bethany Allen at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute told AFP.
"The more countries that learn from the Chinese model, the fewer countries willing to criticise such a state-first, repressive approach."
- 'We can learn from China' -
Several foreign police officers said they hoped to use Chinese technology and increase collaboration.
"We can learn from China," said Sydney Gabela, a major general in the South African police service.
"We wanted to check out the new technologies that are coming out so that we can deploy them in South Africa," Gabela told AFP.
At the conference, exhibitions displayed a dizzying array of policing tools.
One firm, Caltta Technologies, showed off a project helping the southern African nation of Mozambique to set up an advanced "Incident Response Platform" and touted its abilities to use big data in "rapid target location".
Tech giant Huawei said its "Public Safety Solution" was now in use in over 100 countries and regions, from Kenya to Saudi Arabia.
The tech giant was sanctioned by the United States in 2019, described as "an arm" of the Chinese surveillance state.
- Pin-point tracking -
Other firms had even more explicit links to alleged repression.
The United States sanctioned SDIC Intelligence Xiamen Information, formerly Meiya Pico, for developing an app "designed to track image and audio files, location data, and messages on... cellphones".
In 2018, the US Treasury said residents of Xinjiang "were required to download a desktop version of" that app "so authorities could monitor for illicit activity".
China has been accused of incarcerating more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang -- charges Beijing vehemently rejects.
At the firm's booth in Lianyungang, representatives demonstrated cutting-edge facial recognition tools that allow users to sharpen fuzzy footage to better identify suspects.
"If you have a fugitive... and you only have a very blurry image of them, you can use our restoration (software) to make the photo extremely clear," one explained.
"It even shows the gaps between his teeth," he said.
The tech allows for pin-point tracking of suspects, the representative said.
"For example, if a whole video has... five hours (of footage) and we want to find them, now we can use our system to find them."
Another exhibitor, the Ministry of Public Security's Institute of Forensic Science, displayed high-tech DNA testing equipment.
Washington barred the institute in 2020 from accessing some US technology, as part of a group of Chinese firms accused of being "complicit in human rights violations and abuses".
It was later removed from that list as part of an effort to facilitate US-China cooperation in the fight against fentanyl.
- 'Exercise influence' -
Several delegations expressed interest in learning from the Chinese police.
"We have come to establish links and begin training," Colonel Galo Erazo from the National Police of Ecuador told AFP.
"Either Chinese police will go to Ecuador, or Ecuadorian police will come to China," he added.
One expert told AFP that this outsourcing of security is becoming a key tool in China's efforts to promote its goals overseas.
"Police training and advising are a growing way that China seeks to exercise influence and shape its security environment abroad," Sheena Greitens at the University of Texas at Austin said.
This, Greitens said, could give Beijing an important strategic edge.
"China's offers of police cooperation and training give them channels through which to learn how local security forces -- many either on China's periphery or in areas that Beijing considers strategically important -- view the security environment," she said.
"These initiatives can give China influence within the security apparatus if a threat to Chinese interests arises."
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