Western China Region Aims to Track People by Requiring Car Navigation
February 24, 2017Officials in China’s largest prefecture, in the far-western region of Xinjiang, are requiring all drivers there to install a Chinese-made satellite navigation system in their vehicles, according to an official news report this week.
Police officials say drivers must install the navigation system by June 30. “The installation rate will reach 100 percent,” said a report on Monday on the website of The Korla Evening Post, a newspaper in the prefecture’s capital, Korla. The report was also posted on the government-managed website of Beidou, the Chinese satellite navigation system. Beidou is China’s version of the Global Positioning System, or GPS.
News of the navigation system requirement first appeared in a post on the official microblog of the Bayingol traffic police department on Feb. 4. The post said: “In recent years, the international antiterrorism situation has been grim. Cars are the main means of transport for terrorists and have become a frequently chosen tool in terrorist attacks.”
Another post said that on Feb. 19, police officers met to discuss the requirement. After that, a post appeared telling car owners about the order.
Since then, all those posts have been deleted from the official microblog account, but cached versions were saved and are viewable online.