INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption
Shenzhen has grown into a futuristic city in just 30 years
Thirty years ago, Shenzhen was a fishing village, surrounded by paddy fields.Then came a plan to build China's first special economic zone
to allow foreign investments, and out of the quiet rural landscape grew private businesses and factories which over time transformed into a
city.Now Shenzhen, with a population of 12 million, is just one part of a huge urbanised area running down the Pearl River Delta.China's
smart cities ambitions are among the grandest in the world
But there are questions about whether their surveillance technologies will improve the quality of inhabitants' lives or just be used to
keep a closer eye on them.Clean cityBy 2050, about 292 million more Chinese people will live in cities
Already more than 58% of the population are urban dwellers, compared to just 18% in 1980
According to the authorities, there are 662 Chinese cities, including more than 160 with a million people or more.At the Smart Cities Expo
in Barcelona recently, Shenzhen had one of biggest exhibits.Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption
One of the big
focuses for tech in Shenzhen is on traffic and how to ease congestion
Jiang Wei Dong, the general manager of the local
delegation told the TheIndianSubcontinent what technologies are powering the city.They are, he said, "seriously focused on pollution"
"Compared to other cities, Shenzhen is clean," he added.The city is the first in China to ensure that all buses and taxis on its roads are
electric, he explained.Alongside smarter transportation, there is a new smart healthcare system, which makes sure that when anyone comes to
the city from a faraway province their health records are immediately accessible.But when asked about security systems, his response was
less enthusiastic."We are only familiar with traffic
For the citizens of Shenzhen there is no monitoring," he said.Data collectionChina is creating new cities at an astonishing rate, redefining
the urban landscape with plans to create 19 gigantic urban clusters and the world's first super-city with more than 40 million
inhabitants.Urban development on this scale will demand efficiency
Traffic will have to be controlled to avoid weeklong jams, and transport will have to be green to avoid killing everyone with CO2
emissions.But there will also be a need for citizens themselves to be more efficient
Littering, playing music too loud on a train, running across the road when the lights are red - these will stop being minor indiscretions
and become major inconveniences in cities so large.Image copyrightGetty ImagesImage caption
Social credit data lead to
many being banned from public transport
In 2014, the idea of a social credit system was unveiled
The somewhat Orwellian plan is to reward citizens for good behaviour and punish them for bad
In March this year, millions of discredited travellers were banned from buying train or plane tickets for a range of offences, such as using
expired tickets or smoking on a train."In China, the whole social scoring experiment is fascinating but I'm glad that I don't have to live
through it," said smart cities consultant Charles Reed Anderson.Currently there is no unified social credit system
Instead local governments enforce the idea in different ways, which can sometimes have a knock-on effect on foreign visitors.Mr Anderson
told an anecdote about a friend who had recently visited a Chinese city."He got to his hotel and realised he had left [his phone in a taxi],
so the hotel walked him to the police station," he explained
"The police pulled up the data about the vehicle but didn't have the traffic cam so they took him to another department a few blocks away,
and they were able to track the taxi in real time and called the driver to ask him to bring back the phone
"Within two hours he had his phone back.""The taxi driver may have been worried that if he didn't return it, he was going to get a negative
score."There has been huge criticism of the system but, says Mr Anderson, it probably feels far less creepy to Chinese citizens, who have
grown up used to have their activities monitored by the state."I'm not 100 percent behind it - it can deliver some good things
But if it starts getting abused then it becomes a major problem," he said.Human Rights Watch revealed earlier this year that one social
credit system being used in the Xinjiang province, home to a largely Muslim population, was linked to an app used by Chinese police and
other government officials.City brainMore and more data and information is falling into the hands of the government via sensors and other
technology in cities.But what happens when cities do deals with private tech giants such as Alibaba and Tencent, who themselves have vast
databases of information on citizens?Alibaba is headquartered in the eastern city of Hangzhou and has spent two years developing a platform
dubbed the City Brain, which analyses data from cameras and the GPS location of cars and buses, and uses it to control more than one
thousand traffic lights to prevent gridlock.It claims it has helped drop the city of seven million people from the fifth most congested in
China to 57th on the list.Now cities are handing over chunks of land to tech firms
The Shenzhen government has just awarded Tencent a small 809 sq m (8,708 sq ft) plot of reclaimed land in order to build what it describes
as "a future city focused on technology and innovation".Image copyrightWaterfront TorontoImage caption
Google affiliate
Sidewalk Labs plans to build a digital city in Toronto
And increasingly, Western cities are also doing deals with Chinese
firms.Councillors in Darwin, Australia travelled to China to meet Huawei and see its technology in Shenzhen
The firm then implemented a $10m programme to roll out 900 smart LED lights, 24 environmental sensors and a network of 138 CCTV
cameras.Rejecting claims the city was going to implement a similar social credit scheme of its own, Lord Mayor Kon Vatskalis told ABC News
that "there's no facial recognition and our cameras can't tell who you are or what you do"
You can learn about this and other smart cities on the TheIndianSubcontinent World Service's Business Daily.
