Proponents of so-called smart cities never talk about China’s smart cities. From Robert Williams at gatestoneinstitute.org:
Has the West Dodged the World Economic Forum’s Totalitarian Global Control?
[World Economic Forum founder Klaus] Schwab appears to be a great admirer of the Chinese Communist state, which he praised in 2022 as a “model” to emulate.
In reality, the purpose of the smart city, as seen by its widespread use in China, has little to do with improving quality of life. Instead, it is overwhelmingly about state surveillance, followed by total monitoring and control of the inhabitants and the uninhibited extraction of their data for its system of social credits.
Smart cities, in fact, are a Chinese Communist idea, established by the Chinese government in its 12th Five-Year Plan, issued in 2011.
In China, smart cities have been purposely developed into terrifying tyrannical nightmares. In many cities, including Shanghai and Hangzhou, every district has a data-hub, known as a so-called “City Brain,” that monitors and stores unbelievable amounts of information about all citizens. The data is gathered by millions and millions of surveillance cameras with facial recognition technology, aided by artificial intelligence. They all feed in the smallest details, such as whether a construction worker is wearing his helmet on the job, wrongful disposal of garbage and other minute offenses. Police patrols access the monitoring systems through a mobile app, to enable them to act immediately against any offenses of the law.
Offenses lead a citizen to receive a low social credit score, which in turn can lead to blacklisting from traveling on airplanes and high-speed trains, a ban on leaving the country, denial of access to services and even being barred from renting an apartment. This is the Chinese system which Schwab so openly admires.
According to a 2024 World Population Review article, “Smart cities started in Europe with early adopters being Barcelona and Amsterdam…” No mention of China and its more than 500 smart cities, because that might start people questioning the plan. Better to pretend that it is a European concept.
