China Defence Today Forum

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China has completed an ambitious drive to install digital surveillance systems at all border checkpoints, on land and offshore, with the new Great Wall being seen as a key part of its national security strategy.
The People's Liberation Army Daily said the surveillance system had been completed at the end of last year, with thousands of video surveillance devices installed and connected to dozens of control centres by fibre-optic cables.

It said the final border post to have the system installed was in the Tibet border county of Medog. All border checkpoints with more than 100 soldiers were now linked.

The newspaper said the digital surveillance system was part of a 4.7 billion yuan (HK$5.3 billion) infrastructure project begun in 1994 after China signed border agreements with 12 of the 14 countries with which it shares a land frontier (India and Bhutan were the exceptions).

The offshore border project began in 2004 after a dispute with Russia over Heixiazi Island - which Russia calls Bolshoy Ussuriysky Island - was solved. Russia formally handed over half of Heixiazi to China four years later, ending a decades-long border dispute between the two countries.

The newspaper said the PLA had finished 25,000 kilometres of patrol paths along its sea border, more than 7,000 kilometres of border fences on land, at least 3,000 border markers and watchtowers, coastal defence installations, piers and helipads.

The PLA Daily said the digitisation of the border surveillance system would help the army curb the "three forces" of separatism, terrorism and extremism in China. It said the system would also help control smuggling, illegal immigration, drug trafficking and other crimes.

Beijing-based retired PLA general Xu Guangyu said the video surveillance system installed at border sites was built to military specifications, featuring high-definition images and all-weather functions.

"In fact, our system has also been perfected day after day: for example, we can connect it to surveillance satellites which we have launched into space," Xu said. "In future, it will be further upgraded by introducing unmanned aircraft in some remote border posts or those with bad weather."

A retired PLA senior colonel who requested anonymity said the frontier surveillance network was not a result of concerns following riots in Tibet and Xinjiang in the past two years. Rather it reflected the concerns of former PLA leaders who had visited frontier posts in Tibet, Xinjiang and some plateau regions, many in harsh, uninhabited areas.

"Many PLA leaders, like former general staff head Fu Quanyou, have never stopped lobbying the central government to set up a human-oriented border infrastructure system, to improve the working environment for our frontier troops since the 1960s," the senior colonel, who visited Medog in 1988, said.

"The computerisation of the frontier patrol system was launched two decades ago as our economy improved after opening up."

He said the computerisation of the surveillance system at remote frontier guard posts was welcome news to soldiers who served in them, because it would make it easier for them to do their job.

"The video surveillance devices not only enhance border security but provide a human-oriented working environment for our frontier solders," he said. "Many of our soldiers working in remote and oxygen-deficient plateaus have been suffering from blood and heart problems."

The PLA Daily said the frontier surveillance project had focused on sea defence in recent years, with the Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea being key targets.

Victor Sit Fung-shuen, a professor of geopolitics and director of Hong Kong Baptist University's Advanced Institute for Contemporary China Studies, said improved border defences on the disputed islands would have an impact on China's neighbours given their overlapping territorial claims. "But I think it will be a positive impact in the long term because we have to solve the disputes actively one day," he said. "China can only concentrate on economic and trade development when it solves all border disputes on land and sea."