China loads surveillance app on tourists’ phones in Xinjiang

BEIJING: China has turned its western region of Xinjiang into a police state with few modern parallels, employing a combination of high-tech surveillance and enormous manpower to monitor and subdue the area’s predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities. Now, the digital dragnet is expanding beyond Xinjiang’s residents, ensnaring tourists, traders and other visitors — and digging deep into their phones.
A team of journalists examined a policing app used in the region, getting a rare look inside the intrusive technologies that China is deploying.
China’s border authorities routinely install the app called Fengcai — a name that evokes bees collecting pollen — on smartphones belonging to travellers who enter Xinjiang by land from Central Asia, according to several people interviewed by the journalists who crossed the border recently.
The app gathers personal data from phones, including text messages and contacts. It also checks whether devices are carrying pictures, videos, documents and audio files that match any of more than 73,000 items included on a list stored within the app’s code. Those items include Islamic State publications, recordings of jihadi anthems and images of executions. But they also include material without any connection to Islamic terrorism such as a photo of the Dalai Lama and even a song by a Japanese band. China’s Ministry of Public Security and the Xinjiang regional gover nment did not respond to faxed requests for comment.