Invasion of the Chinese Body Scanners?

On a quest to boost innovation and make China a global technological power, Beijing for years has trumpeted homegrown technologies in everything from mobile communications to trains to microprocessors. The latest project getting pumped? A locally-developed body scanner. “Unlike those produced in the U.S., this scanner can detect prohibited objects while also guarding people’s privacy,” the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported late Thursday, citing an executive at the product’s manufacturer.

The scanner can automatically delete personal information when it completes its task, the report said, citing Jia Zhong, general manager of Tianjin Chongfang Science & Technology Company. Full-body scanners deployed in airports have proven a lightning rod with certain sections of the traveling public in the U.S. since the machines can see through people’s clothes. The devices have also come under fire over concerns about radiation exposure. The Chinese scanner has also solved the radiation issue, according to Xinhua. The X-ray radiation the device emits is “negligible,” the news agency said, equal to one-thirty-sixth of the radiation a airline passenger is exposed to when flying from Beijing to Shanghai.

The Chinese body scanner “uses an anti-scattering X-ray mechanism to detect nonmetal objects such as ceramic knives, explosives, drugs, plastic weapons and liquid bombs,” Xinhua said. The report didn’t say whether China’s government is explicitly backing the project, but it said the body scanner has “independent intellectual property rights” and its maker plans to deploy 1,000 units each year in a variety of venues including airports, railway stations and customs crossings. Xinhua said a group made mostly of experts from Beijing’s elite Tsinghua University developed the body scanner, which was exhibited at a seminar in southern China’s Guangdong province this week.

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