The trade war between China and America has been going on for weeks and has claimed big casualties. One of the big casualties of the war is Huawei after the company was barred from doing business in the United States. The New York Times has now learnt that the Trump administration is eying another Chinese video surveillance company as its casualty. The Times has learnt that the company will be prohibited from buying American products. Hikvision will become the first Chinese company to be punished by the administration due to its role in the detention of Uighurs as well as mass surveillance on the minority Muslim ethnics. In just two weeks the tension between China have soared to a record high where the Trump administration has raised the tariffs to over 200 billion dollars of Chinese goods and has also issued a warning that his administration will tax all the goods entering America from China. Hikvision plays a crucial rule in the Chinese government desire to become the world’s largest exporter of surveillance systems. In fact, the company is known as the largest exporter of video surveillance products in the world and the ban by the Trump administration will be a huge blow to their business.
According to the Commerce Department any company wishing to do business with Hikvision will require US government approval. However, a final decision on the issue has not been made but it’s expected to be made in the coming weeks. Monitoring networks around the world are now more effective and intrusive than before. This can be associated with the inclusion of genetic testing, speech monitoring and artificial intelligence to the traditional surveillance equipment. Hikvision has insisted that its products do not pose a threat to national security. The company says that its products can track a client all over the country using a number of features that include gait, body characteristics as well as facial features. Its officials say that they look for weird activities such as crowds gathering or people suddenly running. The Chinese government has warned that it will retaliate on these bans. Experts believe that the Trump administration is implementing these bans because it believes that China poses a risk on many fronts that include geopolitical, technological as well as economic . China is known for its extensive surveillance on its citizens and this does not do it a favor in this fight. The US government has in the past accused China of discriminating its citizens on the basis of religion and culture.
