Month: February 2019

China Bans Millions of Travellers

China’s National Public Credit Information Center on Friday released a report that said it stopped 17.5 million people from buying airplane tickets and 5.5 million from hopping on a train in 2018 because they had low “social credit” scores. Another 290,000 people were stopped from getting a high-paying senior management job.

Fortune.com

And that is from a limited trial. While communist countries like China and Russia have embraced capitalism in recent years, the authoritarian rule is as strong as ever, enhanced by technology.

Saudi Arabia Invests $20B in Pakistan

Pakistan has now received massive investment from both China and Saudi Arabia. The Saudi deal also includes the release of 2,000 Pakistani prisoners.

Being a memorandum of understanding means that the actual deals could fly under the radar later. Presumably the average Pakistani will not benefit in any way…

Khan welcomed Saudi investment in areas of oil refining, petrochemicals, energy and other sectors. “We have CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor), we have links with China. So we welcome Saudi Arabia to participate with us. It’s an exciting future,” the Pakistani prime minister said. 

CPEC is a package of infrastructure, energy and port-building projects Beijing is funding in Pakistan as part of its global Road and Belt Initiative. China has already invested $19 billion over the past five years and plans to invest billions more to construct industrial zones. 

Pakistan maintains strong political, cultural, economic and defense ties with Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Kingdom hosts more than 2.5 million Pakistani expatriates, and is a key source of oil supplies for Islamabad – on deferred payments, as well cash grants to help Pakistan’s often ailing economy.

Chinese Facial Recognition

The Sky Net programme, now renamed Pingan Chengshi, or Safe Cities, claimed to have connected 170 million cameras across China last year. By 2020, another 400 million units will be installed.

…The trade war will lead to a tech war which is a data war which leads to competing forms of artificial intelligence.
Source: Medium

More data. More funding. Bigger datasets. China is winning the facial recognition game. Allegedly the NYPD are using Chinese systems for this.

While physical products from China like 5G can be blacklisted by the US, it is very hard to keep software out. And software is perhaps easier to use for espionage than hardware.

This particular product could lead to new US regulations regarding the source of software, or perhaps the ability of software to reach non-USA servers.