Cities in China are under the heaviest CCTV surveillance on the planet. London is the only city in the West that still competes with that record.


First published in July 2020.

According to a study by research website Comparitech, most of the world’s most surveilled cities are located in China. The country features heavily throughout the whole ranking that looked at the 150 most populous cities worldwide.

The Chinese city of Taiyuan, in the Shanxi province, tops the list with 120 public CCTV cameras per 1,000 inhabitants. The first non-Chinese city in the ranking is London, also notorious for its strict surveillance of public spaces, with 67 cameras per 1,000 people. Far behind Los Angeles comes as the highest-ranked U.S. city in the ranking with 6 cameras per 1,000 inhabitants.

The makers of the survey note that there is little correlation between lower crime rates or a heightened feeling of security and surveillance in the cities surveyed.

The most surveilled cities in the world. / Statista





[This piece was first published in Statista & written by Katharina Buchholz, Data Journalist at Statista.]

(Cover: Pexels.)

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