Detailed findings from AP investigation into how US tech firms enabled China’s digital police state

BEIJING (AP) — American tech companies to a large degree designed and built China’s surveillance state, playing a far greater role in enabling human rights abuses than previously known, an Associated Press investigation found . They sold billions of dollars of technology to the Chinese police, government and surveillance companies, despite repeated warnings from the U.S. Congress and in the media that such tools were being used to quash dissent , persecute religious sects and target minorities .

The AP investigation was based on tens of thousands of leaked emails and databases from a Chinese surveillance company; thousands of pages of confidential corporate and government documents; public Chinese language marketing material; and thousands of procurements, many provided by C