Tiandy is one of several Chinese companies at the center of China’s vast domestic surveillance network, experts and human rights advocates say. A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, said the embassy could not speak on behalf of Chinese private companies. Last week, the Biden administration effectively banned the sale or import of new equipment from a number of Chinese surveillance firms but Tiandy Technologies was not named. Maya Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch, said Chinese surveillance technology tends to be less expensive and more attractive for some authoritarian governments. Like other video technology companies in China, Tiandy’s software includes an ethnicity tracking tool that supposedly can digitally identify someone’s race.

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