China wants to use artificial intelligence to surveillance and segregate its citizens. This is evidenced by tests carried out recently in Uyghur. Equally disturbing are reports that the government is working with Huawei, Alibaba and Baidu to do this.

China does not hide the fact that it has been working on various solutions for a long time to facilitate the surveillance of its citizens. We recently reported that a new artificial intelligence algorithm was being tested to detect potential criminals. Now, further tests on national minorities are underway.

"The Chinese government uses Uyghurs as test subjects for various experiments, just like rats are used in laboratories," said an engineer at the company that developed software designed to recognize people's emotions based on images from city surveillance cameras. The Uyghurs are a Muslim ethnic group living in northwestern China.

Chinese services already use the system that segregates this group. Another Social Assessment System classifies Uighurs as the lowest social class, which is associated with many inconveniences and problems, e.g. with admission to schools or granting loans.

There has been a long debate about how closely Chinese technology companies are related to the state. The American research group IPVM claims that it has found evidence of the use of technologies, including Huawei to discriminate against the Uighurs.

As an example, he cites a patent filed in July 2018 by Huawei and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It describes facial recognition technology that is able to identify people based on their ethnicity.

The group also found a document it said could prove the company's development of technology for the One Person system, One File. "For each individual, the government would store their personal data, their political activities, their relationships ... anything that could give an insight into how that person will behave and what kind of threat they may pose," explained IPVM's Conor Healy.

"Huawei is opposed to discrimination of any kind, including the use of technology to carry out ethnic discrimination," the company responded to questions asked by the BBC about the IPVM findings. As a privately held company, Huawei is independent of the government wherever we operate.

US researchers also found the government linked to other Chinese companies, including Dahua. The technology created by the giant could allow the identification of 56 recognized ethnic groups in China and could be used to persecute the Uighurs.

Other evidence highlights government cooperation with companies such as Alibaba and Baidu. In an interview with the BBC, the Chinese embassy in the UK, however, denied the accusations that it was using facial recognition technology to analyze Uighurs.

Chongqing investigative journalist Hu Liu said in an interview with British Panorama about his own experience:

- When you leave the house and enter the elevator, you will be captured by a camera. Cameras are everywhere. (...) I leave the house and call a taxi, and the taxi company sends the data to the government. There were times when I met friends and soon someone from the government contacted me, says Hu Liu. - Artificial intelligence does not allow us to hide.