In early 2024, a young man in the city of Huangshi, south-eastern China, reportedly posted a message on the Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin. The caption read: "Farewell to this world."
Within minutes, the suicide prevention team at Douyin kicked into gear. The team, which is staffed 24 hours a day, shared the man's posts with five police stations in Huangshi. After geolocating one of his videos to a local park, police found him in emotional distress and intervened before he was able to take his own life.
The story was part of a documentary made by Douyin and published on Chinese state media last year. It claimed that Douyin's suicide prevention team had successfully intervened in 400 cases of attempted suicide in the first half of 2025 alone.
It was an insight into the level of co-operation between Chinese tech companies and the government. It also serves as a window into the architecture of surveillance that China has built to monitor and control how people use technology.
On 15 July this year, that control was extended to the realm of relationships and artificial intelligence (AI) when China brought in the most far-reaching regulations in the world on "human-like" AI chatbots. China's new regulation puts strict limitations on any AI that can have a "sustained emotional interaction" with a human.
FULL ARTICLE AT: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm4gjy9lr551o
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