China’s spending on “public safety”, which includes money used to maintain public order and “control speech” at home reached $210 billion in 2020, according to a report by Nikkei Asia, which said the amount has more than doubled over the past decade and that the total outlay on public safety “was as much as 7% higher than its [official] national defence spending in 2020”.
With street cameras installed in all residential areas and commercial buildings in cities such as Shanghai in 2021, some parts of the country were close to becoming crime-free, however “public distrust of authorities has deepened” due to the zero-Covid policy and the state’s ability to monitor everyone’s movements via ‘health codes’ on their smartphones, the report said, adding that “pent-up frustration among the public is growing further as the crackdown begins to grow excessive”.
Read the full report: Nikkei Asia.
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