The Chinese surveillance state in Latin America? Evidence from Argentina and Ecuador

Abstract

Western authors fear that Chinese exports of surveillance technologies to Global South countries may lead to reproduction of the problematic surveillance practices that the Chinese state practices within its borders. However, much of this literature is not based on empirically-grounded research. To examine such concerns, we investigated two surveillance projects built in Argentina and Ecuador in cooperation with Chinese enterprises—JSeI in Argentina and ECU 911 in Ecuador. Based on empirical evidence, we argue for a more situated and differentiated approach for examining such projects that considers the distributed agency among local and Chinese actors, as well as the economic, social, and political factors that led to their deployment.

Keywords:

• Argentina
• Chinese surveillance technologies
• Ecuador
• Global South
• surveillance state

Acknowledgements

We thank Richard Heeks, Nick Jepson and Seth Schindler of the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, for the constructive feedback that we received in previous versions of this manuscript. We also thank the comments and suggestions from two anonymous reviewers. All remaining errors are the authors’ own responsibility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This article was supported by the project, “China’s Digital Expansion in the Global South,” funded by the Faculty of Humanities, University of Manchester, UK. Vila Seoane also thanks the support received from the National Scientific and Research Council (CONICET) of Argentina via a postdoctoral scholarship grant.