Title: China's anti-food waste campaign puts dinner tables under the government's watchful eye
Headings: China's anti-food waste campaign puts dinner tables under the government's watchful eye
China's anti-food waste campaign puts dinner tables under the government's watchful eye
Food and wealth
Growing surveillance
Agricultural crisis
'People will forget'

Content: Growing surveillance
Some Chinese citizens have been frustrated by what they see as yet another political limitation on their everyday lives. In recent years, the government has tightened controls on internet usage, censoring political discussion and actively tracking people's digital footprint. More than 20 million surveillance cameras had been installed in China by 2017, according to state broadcaster CCTV, with facial recognition technology able to track the movements of citizens across the nation. And authorities still regulate which city people can live in with access to health care, and the number of children couples can have. Until the new campaign, eating was "one of the few things people can freely do under China's authoritarian system," said Wu, the political analyst. Earlier this month, state-run media reported that a district government in Harbin city, Heilongjiang province, had set up a " food waste exposure system " for government canteens, installing surveillance cameras near food collection bins into which workers scrape their leftovers. Those caught on camera with food waste more than three times will be named and shamed, with footage of their "crimes" to be played on television screens across the canteens. Some local governments have expanded their surveillance of food waste to entire cities, with Shanghai encouraging citizens to report each other if they saw someone eating too much or wasting food. The punishments for this offense were not specified in the announcement. "Why should I be reported for things I bought with my own money?"