Big Brother shouldn’t be just watching within the Chinese megacity of Chongqing – he’s in all places, suddenly.
Boasting a population of 30 million people, and stretching across 31,815 square miles, it’s one in all the biggest cities on the earth, and even larger than entire countries – like Scotland.
What also sets the previous wartime capital of China, during World War II,apart is the sprawling CCTV network that operates inside.
Stepping inside Chongqing, every street, alleyway and apartment constructing is watched by cameras.
The way in which it really works is that neighbourhoods are divided right into a grid-like pattern with 15-20 households per square.
Each grid has a monitor which reports back on residents’ activities to local committees.
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A report back to the Chinese National People’s Congress from earlier in March offers a glimpse of how this technique works and the way Chinese authorities are ramping up surveillance even further.
It said one other 27,900 surveillance cameras alongside 245 sensors were installed as a part of the excellent ‘grid’ surveillance, Radio Free Asia reported.
Cities in China are under the heaviest surveillance system on the earth, with estimated 626 million cameras to 1.43 billion people.
But Chongqing beats even science and technology hubs like Beijing and Shanghai.
It’s all a part of a complicated mass surveillance project, conducted by the Chinese government through Web surveillance, CCTV and thru other digital technologies.
One other element of what makes Chongqing so dystopian is the way in which town is ready up.
Its mountainous geography has forced architects to utilise vertical space and create a multi-layered urban structure.
Buildings and infrastructure are integrated into this terrain, with roads and metro lines erected above ground or tunneled through slopes and even residential skyscrapers, also to maximise space.
This has resulted in a ‘5D city’ where different levels of infrastructure are interconnected even high up within the sky.
The town also boasts 298 skyscrapers over 100 metres tall and 26 buildings exceeding 200 metres, rating fifteenth worldwide for the variety of skyscrapers and sixth in mainland China.
To place that into context, there are currently just 12 towers in London that exceed 200m.
For the growing variety of tourists, the 5D city’ is an enchanting phenomenon, but for residents – particularly the working class who live to tell the tale the lower levels of Chongqing – it implies that sunlight has develop into luxury.
The megacity can be perpetually grey, enshrouded by a thick layer of fog for over 100 days of the yr – even before China’s industrial explosion – forcing residents to live in the dead of night for not less than a 3rd of the yr.
10 most surveilled cities on the earth
Based on the variety of cameras per 1,000 people, these cities are the highest 10 most surveilled on the earth, in response to 2023 evaluation by UK-based technology research firm Comparitech.
- Cities in China – 626 million cameras to 1.43 billion people = 439.07 cameras per 1,000 people
- Hyderabad, India – 900,000 cameras for 10,801,163 people = 83.32 cameras per 1,000 people
- Indore, India – 200,000 cameras per 3,302,077 people = 60.57 cameras per 1,000 people
- Delhi, India – 449,934 cameras for 22,547,000 people = 19.96 cameras per 1,000 people
- Singapore, Singapore – 109,072 cameras for six,080,859 people = 17.94 cameras per 1,000 people
- Moscow, Russia – 214,000 cameras for 12,680,389 people = 16.88 cameras per 1,000 people
- Baghdad, Iraq – 120,000 cameras for 7,711,305 people = 15.56 cameras per 1,000 people
- Seoul, South Korea – 144,513 cameras for 9,988,049 people = 14.47 cameras per 1,000 people
- St Petersburg, Russia – 75,000 cameras for five,561,294 people = 13.49 cameras per 1,000 people
- London, England – 127,423 cameras for 9,648,110 people = 13.21 cameras per 1,000 people
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