China to track 17M Beijing citizens' phones

The government announced that it will be tracking citizens to ease traffic congestion

In a move that is so predictable it makes you wonder what took them so long, the Chinese government has announced that it will begin tracking Beijing residents' cell phones. The reason? To ease traffic congestion. 

The announcement was made on the Chinese government's website and elaborated in the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Part of China. The government will leverage data from state-owned carrier China Mobile (which happens to be the largest telecom network in the world) to track the movement of 17 million cell phone owners in Beijing to reportedly gain an understanding of "population distribution and flow," according to the People's Daily. Specifically, the project will use location-tracking technology to get real-time information on where residents are throughout the day. 

“By sending dynamic travel information to citizens, they can adjust their trip plan in downtown areas to effectively relieve traffic congestion," said Li Guoguang, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission, to the People's Daily. He added that it also happens to be pretty useful for population management. Way to kill two birds with one stone, China!

Of course, the government has been able to do this all along, so it's curious that it would make the announcement at all. By connecting to a cell tower or accessing GPS data, any government can track its citizens' whereabouts down to a city block. 

But the announcement comes amid heightening conflict in Libya, where the government has waged an all-out war against its citizens and shut down the Internet on Friday to prevent protesters from organizing. At the height of the protests in Egypt, China blocked the word "Egypt" from search engine results.  

But to be fair, Beijing does have a history of nasty traffic jams. In August, a 62-mile jam between Beijing and Jining city gummed up traffic for nine days. Similar traffic jams also occurred in June and July, which have been attributed in part to the increase in cargo trucks heading into Beijing. But China is also on track to become one of the largest auto economies in the world. In 2009, while the rest of the world was shriveling under a global economic recession and car sales had all but come to a stand still, passenger car sales in China totaled 13.6 million, compared to 10.4 million in the U.S.

So as unlikely as it seems, this could be a legitimate effort to get on top of the traffic situation in Beijing, which happens to come with the added benefit of allowing the government to keep tighter tabs on citizen activity, particularly among those pesky human rights activists. 

But if exploding car sales in China are really that bad, maybe the government could implement a one-car-per-family policy?

Image source: unplggd.com