As of September 2025, Solomon Islands have begun adopting Chinese village surveillance techniques, with the hope of curbing potential civil unrest. China has a long history of surveilling its citizens, and has developed an advanced system of monitoring its citizens on an individual level. China’s surveillance techniques include drones, cameras, internet monitoring and individual reporting- all of which are currently being piloted in Solomon Islands, with citizens becoming familiarized with the different pieces of becoming a surveilled society. Andrew Nihopara, a community leader in Solomon Islands, confirmed collaboration between a village near Honiara and Chinese police to introduce surveillance methods such as population management, fingerprint and palm print collection, and registration of household members to the government. All of this is being done in hopes of reducing lawlessness and a general lack of safety that has reportedly been on the rise in recent years. However, this methodology of social control disregards the traditional social structure of Solomon Islands, with a chief being the center and backbone of a community, and the maintainer of peace. 

An unnamed resident said that in recent years, there has been “a rapid deterioration in social order and a rise in lawlessness”– insinuating that increased monitoring of citizens and communities could be extremely beneficial, with hopes of restoring order and peace within communities. He also said that “[i]n the urban fringe, communities with residents drawn from many provinces [are] resisting traditional systems,” expressing the need for a social construction different from the previous, as cities grow larger and attract more people. 

On the other hand, many express distaste for surveillance efforts. Sheena Chestnut Greitens, an associate professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, described how China has figured out how to entwine surveillance with digital governance “not only to calibrate coercion and repression, but also to provide public services and to co-opt citizens.” She goes on to say that “[s]urveillance is an overall project to make citizens highly legible to the party-state.” 

On the piloting of surveillance methods in Solomon Islands, Peter Kenilorea–an opposition party politician– sees “an infringement on individual rights that are protected by our constitution and should have come through parliament, through our laws,” and argues that “[t]here are better ways to manage communities that are impoverished or struggling”. 

Of the 770 million surveillance cameras in use globally, 54% are in China, making China among the most surveilled nations in the world. China’s surveillance is made up of a network of internet activity tracking, video surveillance, facial recognition software and more– systems specifically made to watch, monitor, and control citizens. The Chinese government has a long history of monitoring its citizens, beginning under Mao Zedong in the 60’s, where a system of individual informants consistently reported to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP has since taken advantage of new technologies– in 2000, the Golden Shield Project created China’s internet firewall, detaching its citizens from the rest of the world and installing nation-wide censorship. 

Although the surveillance methods being tested in Solomon Islands may have humble and well-intended beginnings, with hopes of accounting for and holding liable each citizen, and increasing stability, history shows that the monitoring of each citizen in a way similar to that of China may have adverse effects. Possible outcomes include encroaching on the rights and privacy of citizens, dismantling the social structure fundamental to the traditional way of life in Solomon Islands, and increasing levels of monitoring to eventually include censorship of media and isolation from the rest of the world.

Sources Used 

https://www.asisonline.org/security-management-magazine/monthly-issues/security-technology/archive/20 21/june/The-Rise-of-The-Surveillance-State/ 

https://en.qstheory.cn/2024-03/11/c_969275.htm