Exclusive | How 9/11 and China’s plan for blanket surveillance created a wave that CCTV camera makers Hikvision and Dahua rode to huge success

China is famous for its one-industry towns. Gurao in southern Guangdong province is known for making bras. Qiaotou in Zhejiang province produces most of the world’s buttons. The city of Tianjin to the north is a major manufacturer of bicycles.

Then there is Hangzhou’s Binjiang district, east of the Qiantang River that winds through the city, about 10km (6.2 miles) from the famed West Lake, a Unesco World Heritage Site. Once mostly farmland, the Binjiang district is now home to many manufacturers, including Zhejiang Geely Holding, the owner of Sweden’s Volvo Cars.

It is also headquarters to three of China’s biggest surveillance camera makers – Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology, Dahua Technology and Zhejiang Uniview Technologies. Between them, the three companies account for about 30 per cent of global video surveillance revenue. Hikvision and Dahua together have more than half of China’s video camera market.

China’s surveillance camera makers have long kept a low profile. Each year, they manufacture millions of cameras used to power surveillance systems both in China and abroad that watch over public and private areas such as prisons, railway stations and airports, and scan roads for vehicular breakdowns.

Hikvision and Dahua came under the spotlight when they were named in the US 2019 National Defence Authorisation Act, which banned federal agencies from purchasing cameras from the two companies on concerns that they pose a risk to national security. Both Hikvision and Dahua have said the ban is not expected to have a substantial impact on their business.

Just how did three Hangzhou-based companies pull off their meteoric rise to become major global suppliers of surveillance cameras?