The “dragonfly eye” system is connected to millions of CCTV cameras, and uses artificial intelligence to track down criminals.
Reports suggest it has already been used to track down hundreds of wanted criminals in Shanghai, and could now be rolled out nationally.
Dragonfly eye developer Yitu said the system scans images from China’s national database to search for offenders.
The photos it uses include pictures of visitors to Shanghai taken at its ports and airports.
Yitu boss Zhu Long told the South China Morning Post: “Our machines can very easily recognise you among at least two billion people in a matter of seconds.”
Hailing the advent of the sophisticated technology, he pointed out: “This would have been unbelievable just three years ago.”
Dragonfly eye has helped the police force identify and arrest criminals in Shanghai – a tough feat otherwise, given the city has 24 million inhabitants.
Mr Zhu said: “It’s challenging for the government to police such a large population. And it would be impossible without technology.
“Even when we have many cameras installed, it’s a hard task.
“You can’t watch all the videos, and doing a search is very time-consuming and requires too many resources to get meaningful results from such a huge amount of data. But artificial intelligence can do it easily, and by using existing infrastructure.”
SCMP reports the system helped Shanghai police to make an arrest on its very first day in operation.
It identified a wanted man as he entered a Metro station, sending his image to police and helping them to make an arrest.
That was in January 2017. By the end of March it had brought in 567 suspected criminals on the city’s subways alone.
However there are fears the system could also be used for nefarious means.
Human Rights Watch said: “It is designed to track and predict the activities of activists, dissidents and ethnic minorities, including those authorities say have extreme thoughts, among others.”
It claims dragonfly eye could “violate privacy and target dissent” – rather than simply being used to find genuine criminals.