Fox News host Bret Baier on Wednesday tried to draw attention to the breadth of China’s surveillance program by admitting that one of his crew members was slapped with a ticket after “parking illegally” in Beijing.
“Big Brother is watching,” warned Baier, who added that there were “literally cameras everywhere” while shooting a segment in Beijing, where President Donald Trump began his three-day trip to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
The segment began with Baier exiting a Beijing Subway station as he remarked on several cameras around him that are among a reported 600 million cameras across the country, technology that can now include AI recognition tools.
Baier noted that 1,500 cameras have been installed in Beijing so far this year, claiming that the surveillance has deterred people from jaywalking out of fear of being ticketed before turning to a member of his crew getting whacked by the system.
“In fact, our driver parked illegally for two minutes and he got a message on his phone that he got a ticket for about 40 bucks U.S. because they saw it, on the camera,” said the host, who pointed to “real questions” over what the Chinese Communist Party looked to do through its surveillance practices.
A 2025 report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute flagged a Shanghai district document that detailed how cameras could “automatically discover and intelligently enforce the law” like with the “illegal parking of motor vehicles.”
Several critics on X, including progressive commentator Hasan Piker, noted that mass surveillance systems are also in place in the United States — something Baier did not appear to mention.
In recent months, Americans have raised privacy concerns in their communities over cameras from Flock Safety, a U.S.-based producer of automatic license plate readers that has contracts with thousands of law enforcement agencies.
The hardware has drawn renewed attention due to Trump’s immigration crackdown in his second term, and some communities have put an end to their contracts with Flock altogether. Meanwhile, the president is also reportedly working with software company Palantir to compile a mass database of Americans’ information.
While Flock insists that ICE doesn’t have “direct access” to its platform, NPR highlighted in February that researchers and journalists have found some local police departments have used Flock data to do “side door” searches on behalf of agencies at the Department of Homeland Security.