China is upgrading its extensive legacy camera network with AI-powered systems from manufacturers like Hikvision and Huawei, enabling automated behavioral analysis, crowd detection, and text-based video search without manual review. The modernization follows a 2024 government directive issued after a series of violent attacks, shifting the system's focus from reactive individual identification to large-scale, proactive behavioral monitoring. Human rights experts and Anthropic have raised alarm, warning that the upgrades represent a far more sweeping surveillance capability that China could scale significantly by 2028.
