A Digital Panopticon: Smart Cities as Surveillance Urbanism in Hong Kong

Abstract

Smart city technologies have been repurposed by authoritarian regimes as a new, non-intrusive mechanism of authoritarian control and governance, focusing specifically on the case of Hong Kong under increasing influence from mainland China. While smart cities are typically promoted as innovations for urban efficiency, sustainability, and improved quality of life, their implementation in Hong Kong reveals a more complex reality—one where digital infrastructure has the ability to be used to suppress dissent and reinforce centralized urban governance. Through the historical and political contextualization of Hong Kong’s transition from colonial apathy to democratic aspiration, this paper highlights how the promise of “One Country, Two Systems” has steadily eroded with the assistance of smart city technologies. The Chinese central government’s deployment of non-intrusive surveillance under the guise of smart city initiatives, has enabled a rising perception of a depoliticized, yet deeply invasive, model of enforcing social order. Methodologically, the research employs a comparative case study analysis, analyzing Hong Kong’s smart city evolution with those in both Western democratic contexts and mainland Chinese cities, as well as perceptions from residents in the respective spheres. The study draws on policy documents, scholarly literature, and publicly available surveillance infrastructure data, along with conceptual frameworks regarding the role of civic participation, state-private partnerships, and authoritarian resilience. By comparing Western and Chinese approaches to smart cities and analyzing the public-private dynamics at play, this thesis argues that Hong Kong serves as a pivotal case illustrating the global implications of specific methods perpetuating digital authoritarianism. It will be demonstrated how smart cities will never be completely politically neutral, and that in authoritarian contexts, smart cities have the potential to become sophisticated tools for monitoring, regulating, and ultimately silencing civil political society. In response to this analysis, this thesis also identifies and evaluates potential mechanisms for resisting or mitigating the repressive and invasive functions of smart city technologies, providing a framework for safeguarding urban autonomy in the digital age.