China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is well known for funding major infrastructure projects, including new highways, ports and energy plants across more than 150 countries.

However, China has also gained a serious foothold when it comes to surveillance infrastructure.

This less publicized development has taken off in Latin America in particular, where 35 cities in the region are already signed up to use “Safe City” products from Huawei, one of China’s primary technology providers.

This high-tech surveillance product offering is a major part of China’s Global Security Initiative (GSI), which was launched by President Xi Jinping in 2022, in which the superpower has sought to strengthen its hand with a focus on law enforcement and domestic security.

With the support of Beijing, a growing number of cities across Latin America have been tapping into state of the art surveillance infrastructure to track real-time activity across their municipalities.

China’s success in carving its role as a provider of surveillance technology is driven on a number of fronts. One, for instance, is via the loans and funding provided that enable cities to get up and running with city-wide surveillance.

For example in Ecuador, the nation’s “ECU 911” emergency response system was financed through a $240 million Chinese loan in 2012. It comprised more than 4,300 cameras and 16 response centers staffed by 3,000 personnel, and was built out primarily by Chinese telecommunications enterprise Huawei and the state-owned China National Electronics Import & Export Corporation.

Demand for these solutions stems in part from the prevalence of crime in cities in the region, offering governments an alternative way to crack down on illegal activity.

China, in particular, has undertaken this effort in areas where Latin American governments frequently have faced shortfalls.

A Closer Look at China’s GSI

Although cameras are core to GSI, it also incorporates cutting-edge facial recognition technology and combines real-time data with global intelligence to increase the capabilities of law enforcement.

Among the solutions Huawei sells globally under this label are facial and license-plate recognition, social media monitoring, and other surveillance capabilities. More recent developments in Ecuador showcase the potential to go beyond anti-crime measures alone when it comes to providing safety and stability.

Further, ECU 911 now boasts thermal cameras that monitor snow-capped volcanoes for signs of activity to provide early warning alerts in the event of a natural disaster, drones armed with night vision technology, a platform that sends footage directly to courts to support judicial proceedings, an AI research lab and facial screening to catch suspects in major cities and their airports.

China has also been able to get ahead as a provider of surveillance technology due to an indifference to regime type, corruption or human rights.

However, while China’s ‘safe city’ products may come without any in-built political bias, the longer-term implications of adopting these surveillance systems come with other complications.

Who Controls the Surveillance Data?

With 35 Latin American cities already using China’s surveillance technology, there are concerns that it will lead to a normalization of intrusive monitoring techniques.

These systems are also producing huge volumes of data that are highly sensitive, which raises many concerns. Critics of the approach suggest that governments will clamp down on civil liberties as a result, using the data to penalize citizens for protesting as one example.

These databases could also put national security at risk, creating a prime target for hackers who could exploit this data, cripple monitoring systems or hold leaders to ransom.

This underscores the importance of watertight controls and standards employing the latest DevSecOps methodologies.

Further, for any smart surveillance system, we need to consider how this sensitive data will be handled and who it is controlled by.

Surveillance systems dependent on China-made equipment could also present significant opportunities for Chinese intelligence operations or provide a powerful tool for authoritarian-leaning governments.

Some of the most comprehensive research to date on camera surveillance found that the presence of cameras led to a small reduction in crime. A recent study, led by a team of researchers at City University of New York, Northeastern University and Cambridge University, was conducted on a 40-year systemic review of the effects of closed-circuit television networks on crime trends in countries like Britain and South Korea. Overall, crime decreased 13 percent in areas with CCTV.

In addition to promoting “safe cities” and proliferating law-enforcement equipment, China is building an on-the-ground security footprint across the region to advance its interests.

It established “overseas police stations” in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Panama, officially described as service centers for Chinese nationals abroad.

In practice, however, they monitor diaspora communities, pressure dissidents to return, and extend China’s domestic security policies overseas. These stations complement Beijing’s broader efforts to co-opt elites and interest groups by blending civil and security functions.

Does This Present a Cybersecurity Threat for Latin America in the Future?

With Colombia’s President signing a deal in May to bring the country to China’s signature Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), we should expect China’s surveillance systems to further be adopted in Latin America.

With the sensitive data at risk to hackers, and the potential political implications, it will be more important than ever that we consider how this sensitive data will be handled and who it is controlled by.