CHANGZHOU, China — China runs the largest digital surveillance apparatus on earth. An Associated Press investigation has found that 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.

Many in China hardly notice the country’s millions of cameras. But for the tens of thousands under watch, it’s an invisible digital cage, tracking and restricting their movement.

Among them are the Yang family, living in rural eastern Jiangsu province. Caught in a land dispute, they’ve been trying to seek relief from local officials by appealing to China’s central government in Beijing. But this surveillance apparatus based on American technology monitors and predicts their every move, flag

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