March 17, 2012

As the Chinese government moves ahead on a multibillion-dollar effort to blanket the country with surveillance cameras, one American company stands to profit: Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Mitt Romney. Chinese cities are installing surveillance systems with hundreds of thousands of cameras. In December, a Bain-run fund in which a Romney family blind trust has holdings purchased the video surveillance division of a Chinese company that claims to be the largest supplier to the government’s Safe Cities program, a highly advanced monitoring system that allows the authorities to watch over university campuses, hospitals, mosques, and movie theaters from centralized command posts. The Bain-owned company, Uniview Technologies, produces what it calls “infrared antiriot” cameras and software that enable police officials in different jurisdictions to share images in real time through the Internet. Previous projects have included an emergency command center in Tibet that “provides a solid foundation for the maintenance of social stability and the protection of people’s peaceful life,” according to Uniview’s Web site. While ostensibly for combating crime, human rights advocates say in China such surveillance systems are used to intimidate and monitor political and religious dissidents. “There are video cameras all over our monastery, and their only purpose is to make us feel fear,” said Loksag, a Tibetan Buddhist monk in Gansu Province. He said the cameras helped the authorities identify and detain nearly 200 monks who participated in a protest at his monastery in 2008. The financial disclosure forms Mitt Romney filed last August show that a blind trust in the name of his wife, Ann Romney, held a stake in the Bain Capital Asia fund that purchased Uniview. Mr. Romney reported on his August disclosure forms that he and his wife earned a minimum of $5.6 million from Bain assets held in their blind trusts and retirement accounts. Bain employees and executives are also among the largest donors to his campaign, and their contributions accounted for 10 percent of the money received over the past year by Restore Our Future, the pro-Romney “super PAC.” Bain’s decision to enter China’s fast-growing surveillance industry raises questions about the direct role that American corporations play in outfitting authoritarian governments with technology that can be used to repress their own citizens. All the while, Romney has frequently called for a hard line against the Chinese government’s suppression of religious freedom and political dissent. And, as with previous deals involving American companies, Bain’s acquisition of Uniview violates the spirit, if not necessarily the letter, of American sanctions imposed on Beijing after the deadly crackdown on protests in Tiananmen Square. Those rules bar American corporations from exporting to China “crime-control” products like those that process fingerprints, make photo identification cards, or use night vision technology. While privately profiting from these semi-illegal exports, Mr. Romney publicly has accused the Obama administration of placing economic concerns above human rights in managing relations with China, and he has called on the White House to offer more vigorous support of those who criticize the Chinese Communist Party. Mitt, once again, hypocrisy is thy name.