Police in the Chinese city of Hangzhou are using Alibaba’s City Brain platform to monitor traffic through a network of surveillance cameras, supported by AI and facial recognition technology.

The system runs on Alibaba Cloud and can even change traffic lights. They hope to take the system global, starting with Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

(Abacus is a unit of the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba.)

How China uses digital surveillance to track citizens on the road and beyond

For more insights into China tech, sign up for our tech newsletters, subscribe to our Inside China Tech podcast, and download the comprehensive 2019 China Internet Report. Also roam China Tech City, an award-winning interactive digital map at our sister site Abacus.