Nick Liu knows all too well about the massive troves of data being gathered and analysed by technology companies, so he held off using his phone to pay for foods as long as he could — until he forgot to bring cash one day.

Key points: Baidu's CEO says Chinese people are willing to trade privacy for convenience

Baidu's CEO says Chinese people are willing to trade privacy for convenience Chinese apps usually require users to disclose more information than many apps in the West

Chinese apps usually require users to disclose more information than many apps in the West 3 in 4 Chinese citizens are worried about the threat AI posed to their privacy, survey says

After paying with his phone, he was won over by the convenience, and now, apps including WeChat Pay and AliPay are integral in his life.

Mr Liu is among a growing number of people across the world who are trading in their privacy to use services and apps such as WeChat and Facebook, both of which recently faced backlash for privacy and data breaches.

Meanwhile, the recent moves by the Chinese Government to roll out a Social Credit System to engineer society — which surveys show the majority of citizens in favour of — has raised the question of whether Chinese citizens are more willing to give up their privacy than in western countries like Australia, where a proposed national facial recognition system sparked concerns about its impact on privacy.

Sorry, this video has expired Surveillance software identifies details about people and vehicles in Beijing.(Photo: Reuters/Thomas Peter)

But despite the drawbacks of unknowingly handing over massive amounts of personal information, apps like WeChat have still become the Chinese go-to for everything — paying the bills, ordering food and buying movie tickets.

"It is not that we accept giving up personal privacy for convenience," said 30-year-old Mr Liu, who now lives in Shanghai.

"[But] how do I get access to the convenience if I do not give up my personal privacy?

"It is not that we are willing to sacrifice the privacy, the real matter is that we cannot use the app without sacrificing our privacy and we are not provided with another option."

'Chinese willing to surrender information for goods'

Baidu CEO Robin Li's remarks about Chinese people's attitude towards privacy received backlash. ( Reuters: Stringer )

Last week Robin Li, the chief executive of Baidu — China's Google — came under fire after saying many Chinese people were willing to trade privacy for convenience, which triggered enormous backlash from Chinese netizens.

"Are we asked for permission when our privacy has been violated?" one Weibo user asked.

"It doesn't matter if the user is willing, it matters that people don't have the right to defend their privacy in this social environment."

But some observers believe Mr Li's comments aren't completely unfounded — a survey published by Chinese state media last year showed 80 per cent of pollsters were in favour of using artificial intelligence cameras to publicly name and shame petty criminals.

Beijing-based Bloomberg technology correspondent David Ramli said that generally Chinese apps do require users to disclose way more information than many apps common in the West.

Users need to register their Citizen ID if they want to use a shared bike in China. ( ABC News: Bill Birtles )

"For instance, you want a shared bike in China, to do that, you need to register essentially your passport — your citizen ID card," he said.

"You pay the equivalent of $0.10 for every 30 minutes on a bicycle, but in exchange, you've given them access to your citizen ID card, your phone number and every phone number is registered to an individual."

"But these services are hugely popular in China, with millions of rides having already taken place. I think that is partly an indication of how willing Chinese users are to surrender information in exchange for what they hear are good services."

Mr Ramli said the counter argument would be that some of these companies didn't give users much choice, and increasingly, without these apps, they couldn't access the services used in day-to-day life.

Chinese residents enjoy the objectivity of technology

Some CCTV cameras have facial recognition or infrared capabilities. ( Supplied: Dahua Technologies )

Shanghai resident Cheng Zhang, a retiree in her mid-50s, said she felt safer with the extensive surveillance network in her city.

She said it helped police solve more cases, including "peng ci" — literally meaning "touch porcelain" — a term used to describe a situation where a pedestrian stages a road accident so they can demand the driver to compensate for their injuries.

The phenomenon has made Chinese citizens weary about helping anyone who has fallen on the streets out of fear they might be held legally responsible or blackmailed for compensation.

"Now with surveillance cameras, you can immediately see if the car has hit the person or if they intentionally bumped into the car," she said.

"We have a large population in China, people's behaviour and practices are now more civilised than the past, although some migrants from other third tier cities still show signs of uncivilised behaviour.

"When some people disavow their bad behaviours, there is no real-time evidence to correct them if you don't have surveillance."

'Oversimplification' to say China is more willing

According to an article that appeared on China's official state media Xinhua just days ago but has since been deleted, the country's official Telecommunications Corporation's mobile app automatically obtains 70 "access rights" when the user installs the app, including the ability to make phone calls, send text messages and use the phone's camera without the user's permission.

China Telecom's official app has automatically obtained 70 access rights without asking for users' permission. ( Supplied: Xinhua )

This apparently includes four basic access rights users agree to when they download the app, including: the permission to access the mobile phone's IMEI code, read the call history, make a call, and create/modify/delete the call history.

Elsa B Kania, an expert in Chinese defence innovation and emerging technologies at the Centre for a New American Security, said it was an "oversimplification" to say no one in China cared about privacy, citing a Tencent Research and China Central Television survey that found three in four people in China were worried about the threat AI posed to their privacy.

"Chinese regulatory authorities are in some cases pushing back against what they see as misuse of personal consumer data," Ms Kania said.

"I think concern and awareness are growing, and the Chinese Government's actually putting in place regimes and laws for data protection — more aimed at security than at protecting individual rights," Ms Kania said.

She added that even if there might be concerns and frustration about the extent of the government's surveillance, it was considered integral to the Chinese Communist Party's capabilities to ensure social control and preserve social stability.

"So to protest or pushback against that would be seen as threatening the regime and provoke quite hard harsh consequences," Ms Kania said.

A lack of understanding for consequences: HRW

But China director at Human Rights Watch Sophie Richardson believes many people in China don't know the consequences of sharing so much data, adding that data breaches weren't widely reported by state media on the mainland.

The Shenzhen traffic police website publishes the details of jaywalkers. ( Supplied: Shenzhen Traffic Police )

"Most people will say that a proposed crime fighting strategy sounds good up until they find themselves getting the wrong end of the stick, and find that their own rights are being violated," she said.

"I'd be very interested to know that if all the people who were supportive in that poll [that showed 80 per cent of people were in favour of using AI cameras] also got asked 'if you, for example, forgot to pay a particular bill a few years ago or caught jaywalking could now prevent you from getting a mortgage or enrolling your kid in school … I think people might have a very different view."

Professor John Fitzgerald from Melbourne's Swinburne University said in the People's Republic of China, there appeared to be relatively high support for and trust in the central Government, but low levels of trust among strangers, or what is often called "public trust".

Many of China's middle-class citizens were prepared to accept the surveillance system because they don't believe it was designed to monitor themselves, he said, but rather the strangers in their neighbourhoods: people who come from the other provinces, other towns, ethnic minorities such as the Uyghurs, and foreigners.

Professor Fitzgerald said there was very little tolerance of ethnic or class difference in China today.

"In cities, the Han majority don't like to associate with ethnic minorities from Xinjiang or Tibet — they don't like poor migrant workers either; labourers from out of town who are building apartment blocks and urban infrastructure in the big cities.