[duxup]

The question also is... can they feed all the data they get into an intelligence system that allows them to do the same in other countries?

As they profile everyone in China, can they do the same elsewhere?

The sheer amount of data, poorly protected, or just up for sale data out there in other countries make it seem like they could do the same for "everyone else" just to perhaps a lesser extent.

Perhaps a requirement for even doing business with China would be participating ....

[Cacti]

It's a good question, and the answer is very likely "yes". I have no doubt they will be to export these systems to other politically- or economically- or militarily- friendly countries, once they've developed the datasets and trained the models and such.

They could probably even do it as a lease, and keep the most important stuff (key parts of algorithms, training datasets) at home--Surveillance As A Service!

ANd yes, if their economic continues to grow like this, your observation is a great one--there wouldn't be much stopping them from requiring participation in such leases as a condition on economic or military support.