A man passes the ticket gate through facial recognition payment system at Zijingshan subway station in Zhengzhou, central China's Henan Province, Sept. 27, 2019. A facial recognition payment system was put into use in the Line 1 and the first phase of Line 14 of Zhengzhou Subway on Friday. (Xinhua/Li Jianan)

If the US wants to adopt the technology for its citizens' security, why did the Western media say China did so to monitor its people and collect their personal information? Some Chinese people asked a similar question online following the US Department of Homeland Security's (DHS's) recent proposal to scan the faces of all travelers coming in and out of the US. 

The DHS next year wants to change a regulation to require all travelers to be photographed in order to help locate criminals and prevent travel-document fraud. This would include US citizens when they enter or exit the country, media reported on Tuesday. 

"This is totally a double standard - whatever the US does is correct, but whatever China does is wrong," a Chinese netizen named Renshengdetianyudi commented online, referring to Western media's reporting on China's facial recognition applications. 

"Should the British anchorman who accused China of installing too many CCTV cameras take a stand now?" a netizen named Yishan asked. 

Another netizen wrote that, "The Americans think they have privacy and so do the Europeans...In the eyes of the FBI and the CIA, Americans have no privacy. How can they feel such a superiority to sneer at China?"

Other Chinese people have come up with a formula for the US' policies: when it wants to apply a domestic measure, it claims it is for the purpose of national security; when it comes to foreign policies aimed at other countries, it accuses these countries of violating freedoms and democracy. 

US Customs and Border Protection, part of the DHS, has already conducted pilot programs to collect photographs and fingerprints from foreign travelers, but technical and operational problems have arisen at nine US airports, Reuters reported on Tuesday.