Indiscreet, Indiscriminate Infiltration

"The possibility that someone [in China] could take that data and use it, that is a concern. We have [Chinese] businesses here that operate directly subject to the corporate credit-score system."

"They become, whether wittingly or unwittingly, part of the Chinese security system."

"Closed circuit camera systems are standard in almost every business directly serving the public, and there are video surveillance signs posted throughout the restaurant."

Ivy Li, Canadian Friends of Hong Kong 

"There is no audio recording and no facial recognition function."

"The recorded video is stored on site only and does not get transmitted or backed up to anywhere outside Canada."

Haidilao Canada has no connection with China's social credit program."

Haidilao spokesman, Yang Xibei

"This is beyond having CCTV going in and going out of a restaurant."

"This is people maybe holding hands under the table, or whatever they're doing, and not wanting other people to find out."

Cheuk Kwan, spokesman, Toronto Association for Democracy in China

"Organizations need to consider whether video surveillance will achieve the intended purpose and whether the concerns are serious enough to warrant implementing this highly invasive technology."

British Columbia Information and Privacy Commissioner

Surveillance cameras — about one per table — can be seen on the ceiling of a Haidilao Hot Pot restaurant in Markham, Ont. Photo by Miss V/Google Maps

Haidilao International Holding Ltd., its headquarters in Beijing, owns 935 restaurants situated from Australia to the United States. These are restaurants where diners themselves use pots of bubbling broth to dip meat and vegetables into for an interesting and self-catered meal. The company has four outlets in the Toronto and Vancouver areas in Canada to serve a large population of Chinese both from Hong Kong and the mainland.

Photographs have been posted online that show rows of surveillance cameras focusing on the dining area of these restaurants. According to Haidilao International Holding, the video equipment is there solely to make certain that whoever is in the restaurant remains safe and secure. They discredit a recent report that suggests both staff and customers of the establishments are tracked on behalf of the Chinese Communist regime.

Haidilao staff welcoming patrons. Weibo

Beijing has enacted a social-political code of law that all Chinese, wherever they are, at home or abroad, whether citizens of other countries, have an obligation to act on behalf of CCP interests at all times, whether they're individuals or corporations. Beijing is well known to practise surveillance of all Chinese, within its borders and abroad. It employs pervasive surveillance through both humint (human intelligence) means and electronically.

 

As Ivy Li of Canadian Friends of Hong Kong points out, Chinese law requires its companies to fully cooperate with Chinese security services if/when requested and all such firms are subject to the "social-credit" monitoring system that is prevalent in China. The Canadian Security Intelligence Services not too long ago gave warning of the social-credit system that "data can be collected on companies and individuals abroad, posing a challenge for countries not wishing to be part of a Chinese system of social control". 

Through the social-credit system, citizens are given credit on their "trustworthiness", granted privileges denied those with too many demerits to their credit; which is to say the differentiation between Chinese citizens who strictly obey Chinese decrees as opposed to those who prefer to bypass them. Through electronic means, including facial recognition, the state maintains records on all its immense population, the loyal citizens who are recognized as such and those deemed to be disloyal and suitably discredited.

In the restaurants in Canada private companies like Haidilao are subject to an advanced parallel social credit system designed for corporations where video and facial-recognition plays a dominant role. A Canadian journalist and a military-intelligence veteran have alleged that video from the cameras is routinely sent back to China, in cooperation with the social-credit program -- which Haidilao representatives strenuously deny. The article quotes a Vancouver location manager stating the two cameras per table "People track" and "punish" unreliable employees.

Freelance journalist Ina Mitchell and her co-author, Scott McGregor, a former military intelligence officer, stand by their story based on a formal recorded interview with the restaurant manager along with "other testimony". Photographs for the Markham, Ontario restaurant show what appear to be at least 25 cameras in the ceiling, representing one per table. China employs an estimated 200 to 600 million closed-circuit cameras, in eight of the ten most surveilled cities in the world.

The People's Daily tweeted in 2018 that the government's "Skynet" facial-recognition system could scan China's 1.4 billion people in a second. The manager of Haidilao's Vancouver restaurant interviewed by the Canadian writers, was quoted as stating that its cameras were part of social credit, used against staff who fail to follow corporate standards and to people-track.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Minister of Defense stand in salute to the PLA at a dinner in Vancouver, in 2019, following the arrest of Meng two months earlier. (Still from video) and Inside Vancouver’s Haidilao restaurant, where over 60 surveillance cameras are installed, two for each table and in staff areas.  Sunday Guardian