US Tech Helped Build China’s ‘Digital Cage,’ Trapping Families, Christians and Uyghurs

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent, Worthy News

BEIJING (Worthy News) – Yang Guoliang, a paralyzed farmer in eastern China, lives under the glare of police floodlights and cameras pointed at his modest home. Every phone call, bus ticket, and hospital visit is tracked. His wife and daughter are in jail for petitioning Beijing after officials seized their farmland. “Every move in my own home is monitored,” Yang said. “Their surveillance makes me feel unsafe all the time, everywhere.”

The Yangs are among tens of thousands labeled “troublemakers” and caught in what rights advocates describe as the world’s most expansive surveillance system, built with the help of American technology giants. The same system also targets Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang and Christians meeting in unregistered house churches, deemed illegal by China’s Communist government, according to an Associated Press investigation.

Advocacy group Open Doors warns that China operates “one of the most oppressive and sophisticated surveillance systems in the world,” using it to monitor Christians, restrict unregistered house churches, and harass other faith communities.

The group estimates there are around 96 million Christians in China, many of whom must split into small groups or meet in secret to avoid detection. China currently ranks 19th on the 2025 World Watch List of countries where Christians face the most severe persecution, according to the agency.

The Associated Press (AP) news agency found that U.S. companies, including IBM, Dell, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, and Seagate, supplied billions of dollars’ worth of hardware, software, and systems that became the backbone of China’s “Golden Shield” policing network — designed to censor and control dissent.

These systems, later described by critics as a “digital cage,” introduced “predictive policing” — an artificial intelligence–driven method that processes vast amounts of data to forecast “at-risk” individuals or groups, often before they have done anything.

MASS SURVEILLANCE

In Xinjiang, an autonomous region in China’s far west, the technology underpinned the mass surveillance and detention of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities, assigning risk levels based on small actions such as growing a beard or attending mosque.

The same systems flagged Christian gatherings, deemed illegal by China’s Communist government, as “abnormal activities” and threats to “social stability.”

The United Nations has estimated that about 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have been detained in Xinjiang camps since 2017. Critics describe this as mass internment and forced assimilation.

China denies accusations of abuse, saying its policies in Xinjiang are aimed at counterterrorism, deradicalization, and maintaining social stability.

Some products were even marketed as capable of “all-race recognition,” explicitly designed to identify minorities.

BLACKLISTED FAMILY

Rights groups warn that China is now exporting this “digital authoritarian model” to countries including Iran and Russia.

For families like Yang Guoliang’s, the impact is devastating. Blacklisted and barred from travel, they live under constant intimidation. “Because of this technology … we have no freedom at all,” said Yang’s daughter, now in exile in Japan.

Experts say U.S. firms helped make it possible. “Everything was built on American tech,” said Valentin Weber of the German Council on Foreign Relations.

While some companies later cut ties amid human rights concerns, their legacy systems remain embedded in China’s policing network — powering what survivors describe as a high-tech prison without walls.

Though U.S. companies insist they follow export laws, critics argue that loopholes and third-party sales still allow sensitive technologies to flow into China’s security system — raising fears that the digital cage first built there could spread worldwide.

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