BEIJING — Chinese surveillance is expanding. A Chinese AI startup by the name of ‘Supremind Intelligent Technology’ has managed to raise about $14.6 million dollars (100 million yuan) in its early A-series round of funding.

Supremind’s largest single investor is ‘Creo Capital,’ which is the finance wing of Hong Kong conglomerate, ‘New World Development.’ Joining them is ‘Linear Venture’ and ‘Redpoint Ventures China,’ which also made substantial investments into the Chinese AI startup.

Supremind’s Goal

The Chinese Surveillance company’s goal is to ‘enhance industrial solutions, product lineups, and technical development with NWS Holdings.’ NWS is the infrastructure department of Supremind’s main partner, New World Development. Supremind will use this money to expand its business and to further increase its share of the market.

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A Little More About Supremind

Supremind was founded in 2019. The core members of the company have taken part in the research and development of still images, video deep learning, and large-scale application systems for well more than 10 years. The company tackles problems that face major urban areas. Supremind does so by leveraging AI technology and video analysis.

5 Areas of Focus For Supremind

Urban governance, transportation management, traffic control, public service administration systems, and, of course, internet content censoring. Supremind’s products and services have already been implemented by more than 200 cities in mainland Chinese, already. The company’s most popular products, however, are the ones that are related to smart transportation systems. Those have seen widespread implementations in over 100 Chinese cities.

Local governments in Zhejiang Province and Shanghai City are utilizing Supremind’s Urban governance solutions. Also, Supremind’s public service administration software is in use by several public security system departments in Shanghai. The company’s internet content censoring platform is, of course, widely used across China by the Offices of the Central Leading Group for Cyberspace Affairs.

Humans Are Terrible At Monitoring Video

When humans are the ones doing the video monitoring, it’s very ineffective and inefficient. It’s difficult-to-impossible for a human being to be able to keep up with so many different factors at once. Due to this fact, traffic management has become difficult and has led to many accidents that have resulted in loss-of-life.

Using data resources regarding transportation and road systems provided by NWS Holdings, Supremind has been able to develop its ‘VisionMind’ platform. VisionMind facilitates efficient highway management by enabling the quick analysis and identification of quite a bit of data in a short period of time. Visionmind is able to identify accidents, illegal acts, traffic volume, and specialized vehicles.

Expecting Sales

Supremind is expecting sales from its smart transportation management system will make up most of its sales in 2020. Supremind is placing its crosshairs on road-operators, government offices, and institutions. Supremind predicts that it will take only about a month to recoup its investments. Supremind aims to, at the very least, increase its market’s total size by 100%. While at the same time boosting sales to more than 100 million yuan ($14,640,216 USD) this year.

Supremind formed an alliance with NWS Holdings in April to combine their technological and industrial expertise. This move helped Supremind gain an edge in the market. Now, the company can more easily develop smart highway and architecture management systems.

A Little More About Chinese Surveillance

Moving Forward

Supremind will first apply AI video analysis to smart transportation management. Then, it will focus on smart city construction.

What Purpose Does China’s Surveillance System Have?

Mass surveillance of the Chinese people is used by the Chinese government to monitoring systems the activities of its citizens with unprecedented clarity.

How Many Surveillance Cameras Does China Have?

170 million.

There are about 170 million currently installed, running, and recording CCTV cameras in mainland China. This figure puts the number of Chinese surveillance cameras in the country at 1 for every 12 citizens.

Why are there so many cameras in China?

China uses video surveillance for widespread video surveillance of what’s going on in its cities. The US, by contrast, uses most of its surveillance cameras for the private sector to help prevent theft.

What is The Most Surveilled Country in The World?

China

So, What Does This Mean For The Rest of The World?

I think we can all agree, as westerners, that we don’t like communism. I would say that we don’t like communism here any more than the Chinese like capitalism and democracy there, but I can’t really say that. Why? Unlike the US, China makes the best out of both systems. Is the Chinese government completely free of wrong-doing? Absolutely not. Are we? Of course not.

Not much. But this comes at a team when tensions between east and west are at an all-time high. It’s fuel for the fire for more sinophobic westerns who fear encroachment from other cultures. More often than not, when Americans refer to something being ‘made in China’ they do so with contempt and disgust. In reality, these people just don’t understand history or the geopolitical landscape.

We all live on one, tiny, unremarkable planet, people. Can’t we all just get along?

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Joseph Everett