From LifeSiteNews

By Angeline Tan

45 Chinese firms have showcased their latest police-state products and technologies, with one expert warning that the communist nation is doing so to normalize their method of surveillance and have it adopted abroad.

45 Chinese firms have showcased their latest police-state products and technologies, including state-of-the-art CCTV, precise DNA-testing technology and intrusive facial tracking software, at the inaugural Public Security Tech Expo in Lianyungang, located in China’s Jiangsu province.

Hosted by China’s First Research Institute of the Ministry of Public Security, the 6-day tech expo which began on September 7 showed off advanced technologies in the domains of “criminal technology, police protective equipment, traffic management equipment, anti-terrorism rescue, and command and communication,” according to the forum’s website.

The website’s official description says “the main purpose of holding the Public Security Tech Expo (Lianyungang) under the framework of the Forum is to deepen technical exchanges and international cooperation in the field of public security science and technology equipment, share useful experience in the application of science and technology equipment to public security practice, and jointly improve the ability and level of maintaining public security.”

One firm participating in the expo, Caltta Technologies, featured a project aimed at “helping” the southern African nation of Mozambique establish an “Incident Response Platform,” extolling its abilities to harness data in “rapid target location.”

Tech giant Huawei was also at the expo, boasting that its “Public Safety Solution” is currently used in more than 100 countries and regions, from Kenya to Saudi Arabia. The United States sanctioned Huawei in 2019, castigating the firm as “an arm” of the Chinese surveillance state.

The expo also saw China’s Ministry of Public Security’s Institute of Forensic Science show off its new high-tech DNA testing technologies. In 2020, Washington banned the institute from accessing some U.S. technology after a number of Chinese firms decried the institute as being “complicit in human rights violations and abuses.”

In 2018, the U.S. Treasury stated that residents of Xinjiang “were required to download a desktop version” of the app “so authorities could monitor for illicit activity.”

Communist China has been slammed for jailing over one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang – claims Beijing vehemently denies. Nonetheless, critics have pointed out how China’s surveillance technologies have been used to draconically suppress dissidents in the Xinjiang province.

During the expo’s opening ceremony, China’s police minister praised Beijing for training thousands of overseas police officers this past year – and pledged to aid in the training of thousands more over the coming year.

Reacting to these disturbing developments, especially China’s activity abroad, Bethany Allen at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said, “Beijing is hoping to normalize and legitimize its policing style and… the authoritarian political system in which it operates.”

According to UCA News, “China is one of the most surveilled societies on Earth, with millions of CCTV cameras scattered across cities and facial recognition technology widely used in everything from day-to-day law enforcement to political repression.”

The same UCA News article added:

Its police serve a dual purpose: keeping the peace and cracking down on petty crime while also ensuring challenges to the ruling Communist Party are swiftly stamped out.

Notably, various foreign police officers said they hoped to use Chinese surveillance technology to police their own countries.

“We can learn from China,” said Sydney Gabela, a major general in the South African police service, according to UCA News.

“We wanted to check out the new technologies that are coming out so that we can deploy them in South Africa,” Gabela said.

China’s notoriety for being a highly-surveilled state goes back a long way. In 2023, The Economist ran an article detailing how the prevalence of CCTV cameras in Communist China, many bedecked with facial-recognition technology, “leave criminals with nowhere to hide.” A September 2019 report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) also disclosed  that “the Chinese government has increasingly employed advanced technology to amplify its repression of religious and faith communities.”

The executive summary of the same USCIRF report stated:

Authorities have installed surveillance cameras both outside and inside houses of worship to monitor and identify attendees. The government has deployed facial recognition systems that are purportedly able to distinguish Uighurs and Tibetans from other ethnic groups. Chinese authorities have also collected biometric information—including blood samples, voice recordings, and fingerprints—from religious and faith communities, often without their consent. The government uses advanced computing platforms and artificial intelligence to collate and recognize patterns in the data on religious and faith communities. Chinese technology companies have aided the government’s crackdown on religion and belief by supplying advanced hardware and computing systems to government agencies.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By Jason Cohen

Several asset managers leveraged two major Texas university systems’ endowment funds to advance anti-fossil fuel shareholder proposals in 2022 and 2023, according to a report from the conservative watchdog group American Accountability Foundation (AAF).

BlackRock-owned Aperio Group, Cantillon, former Vice President Al Gore-chaired Generation Investment Management, GQG Partners and JP Morgan Asset Management collectively manage approximately $4 billion for The University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Company (UTIMCO) as of July, which handles the university systems’ endowments. Despite the company’s policy against it and Texas’ status as the leading crude oil and natural gas-producing state, UTIMCO’s asset managers backed over 150 shareholder resolutions under the environmental, social and governance(ESG) umbrella, including proposals that could undermine the oil and gas industry, according to documents AAF obtained through a public records request and shared exclusively with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“Once again, woke ESG ideology has infected a public institution and hijacked its money for their own purposes. This is an outrageous betrayal of the public’s trust,” AAF president Thomas Jones told the DCNF. “[Republican Texas] Gov. Greg Abbott must take immediate action to end this nonsense. He must shake up the leadership at UT/A&M that let this happen and use his influence with UTIMCO to ensure that it never happens again.”

UTIMCO told the DCNF that the ESG and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)-related votes violate “a long-standing policy that prohibits using the endowments’ economic power to advance social or political agendas” and that a review found they consist of 0.3% out of around 45,000 proxy votes in recent years. The endowment manager added that it has since modified its guidelines after finding the violative votes and will impose them on all of its third-party investment managers before future proxy votes, and revoking voting authority for those that cannot follow them.

🚨EXCLUSIVE🚨Swing State’s Pension Funds Used By Wall Street Titans To Push ‘Racial Equity’, Climate Agenda, Report Finds from @jasonJournoDC https://t.co/LXx3y4WZPV

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) January 25, 2024

The company’s asset managers voted in favor of a total of 159 shareholder proposals between them that include “racial and gender pay gap reports, efforts to defund conservative candidates and pro-business trade associations, radical climate policy, targeting of gun purchasers, and proabortion initiatives,” according to the watchdog.

UTIMCO oversees the largest public endowment fund in the U.S., managing over $76 billion as of Aug. 31.

“UTIMCO’s mission is to ‘generate superior long-term investment returns to support The University of Texas and Texas A&M University Systems,’ yet these votes endorse political agendas that run contrary to the Systems’ best interests,” American Energy Institute CEO and former Republican Texas state Rep. Jason Isaac told the DCNF. “By supporting proposals that harm American energy producers, UTIMCO’s fund managers are violating their fiduciary responsibility.”

Texas leads the nation in crude oil and natural gas production and in 2023 was responsible for 43% of crude oil output, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. However, AAF found many examples of UTIMCO’s asset managers voting in favor of proposals aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) emissions and other actions to mitigate so-called climate change, which the watchdog alleges comes at the expense of producing value for investors.

For instance, at ExxonMobil’s May 2023 yearly shareholder meeting, Aperio Group voted in support of a proposal to recalculate its GHG emissions to account for the assets it has sold. The resolution asserted that “the economic risks associated with climate change exist in the real world rather than on company balance sheets” and argues that the investments ExxonMobil sells may lower emissions on paper but that they fail to actually help achieve the goal of keeping global temperatures from rising by 1.5 degrees Celsius — which is an objective of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement — potentially exposing the company and its stakeholders to what it calls “climate risk.”

Some of Aperio Group’s clients have access to customize their individual proxy voting policy, according to BlackRock. BlackRock itself voted against this ExxonMobil proposal on behalf of most of its clients.

AAF’s “report on UTIMCO’s investment practices should alarm every Texan who values our state’s proud oil and gas industry,” Texas Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian told the DCNF. “It’s outrageous to see Texas university investments being used to support radical ESG agendas, decarbonization, and dangerous policies like Net Zero and the Paris Accord, which threaten our energy independence and economy. We must put an end to the woke political agendas that undermine the very foundation of Texas’ success and ensure our investments align with the values of hard-working Texans.”

Moreover, at defense contractor Raytheon Technologies’ yearly shareholder meeting in May 2023, J.P. Morgan Asset Management backed a proposal urging the company to publish a report on efforts to reduce GHG emissions in alignment with the Paris Climate Agreement.

“Raytheon Technologies creates significant carbon emissions from its value chain and is exposed to numerous climate-related risks,” it states. “Failing to respond to this changing environment may make Raytheon less competitive and have a negative effect on its cost of capital and shareholders’ financial returns.”

Isaac told the DCNF that UTIMCO’s “managers are discriminating against fossil fuel” companies through ESG investing based on the definition of “boycott” in Texas’ Senate Bill 13, which Abbot signed in 2021 and the former representative said he helped create.

The bill defines boycotting energy companies as refusing to engage or ending business with a company involved in fossil fuels “without an ordinary business purpose.” It also specifies actions aimed “to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or limit commercial relations with a company because the company” does business related to fossil fuels and fails to “pledge to meet environmental standards beyond applicable federal and state law.”

Isaac added that the asset managers “should be held accountable and placed on Texas’ list of “financial companies that boycott energy companies,” which mandates Texas public investment entities subject to SB 13 “avoid contracting with, and divest from, these companies unless they can demonstrate this would conflict with their fiduciary duties.”

The S&P Global Clean Energy Index, which includes companies that engage in energy production from renewable sources, has fallen about 7% so far in 2024, while the S&P 500 Energy Index, which features many oil and gas companies, has risen close to 3% in that same time.

Louisianans’ pension funds were similarly leveraged to push climate-related proposals within publicly traded companies, the DCNF reported in April, based on another public records request by AAF.

“UTIMCO’s asset managers’ apparent promotion of leftist objectives, including ESG, is extremely troubling and contrary to Texas law banning boycotts and discrimination against fossil fuels. The legislature must exercise oversight and hold UTIMCO accountable,” Republican Texas state Rep. Brian Harrison told the DCNF. “Governmental bodies, including their proxies, should not pursue objectives that harm the Texas economy and go against our values.”

Cantillon, GQG Partners, Texas A&M and Abbot’s office did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment. Aperio Group, Generation Investment Management, JP Morgan Asset Management and the University of Texas declined to comment.