China black market for voyeurs exposed: Some 140,000 victims include primary school girls

A black market for voyeurs has been exposed in China.

The number of victims could be as many as 140,000 people across all of the country's 34 provinces.

The black market was first exposed by Zhou Ninghe, an anti-spycam volunteer, mainland Chinese media Elephant News reported.

Venues where footage were recorded include low-end guesthouses, small hotel chains, and bar toilets, Shin Min Daily News also reported.

The victims include "hundreds" of primary school students, Zhou noted, with their footage sold for roughly five to 10 times the price of footage involving adult women.

To date, 18 vases of voyeurism have been solved by the police based on Zhou's leads, with two of the cases involving minors.

Shandong reportedly worst-affected province

Elephant News reported that Zhou first became aware of such videos in 2022 when he came across one that was secretly filmed at a shower room in a water park in Fuzhou.

Following this discovery, Zhou began to work on trying to pinpoint the location of such videos before he submitted them to the police.

He added that he eventually deduced that all 34 administrative divisions of China had cases of voyeurism, based on his personal findings of determining where the videos were filmed.

The most severely affected provinces were Shandong, Sichuan, Guangdong, and Guangxi, he concluded.

Not all of the perpetrators are men

Zhou further noted that not all of the people behind such videos are deviant men.

Some of them are women and couples, he said.

The perpetrators also reportedly included highly educated professionals and company executives, according to Zhou.

He speculated, however, that the cases of voyeurism were not done purely for lust, but for profit.

Elephant News further reported that these perpetrators operate primarily by moving between various locations, installing hidden cameras to film the videos, then selling them to buyers who in turn, either distribute these videos to users who pay to watch livestreams of the cameras, or edit and send them to pornographic websites.

As for the devices used to film, such hidden cameras could purportedly be found on sale on e-commerce platforms under vague terms, such as "mini XX" or "remote XX", with prices ranging from tens to hundreds of yuan.

Vendors of such products would provide instructions on how to install these devices, with one such vendor advising an investigating reporter from Elephant News to "wear gloves during installation", as well as sharing images of equipment specifications that self-destructed after half a minute of viewing.

Meanwhile, the distribution of such videos would take place in online chat groups.

One such group, "The Largest Street Photography Exchange on the Entire Internet", contained about 4,335 members with discussions pertaining to the exchange and purchase of these videos.

Prices for such videos were based on the victims' looks, while the presence of other "advanced" voyeurs' chat groups required users to submit their own video for access.

These videos were also distributed on online chat forums, with payment required for users to download them from cloud storage services.

Case involving a primary school

Zhou alleged that one case involved a primary school in Yongzhou city, Hunan province, with a video from the school emerging online in May 2026.

The footage came from a camera that had allegedly been installed in a female toilet in the primary school.

According to Zhou, the recording had been going on for at least six months, with hundreds of underage girls affected.

He submitted evidence to the police after 10 days of investigation, resulting in the arrest of the suspects on Jun. 2.

"The people were caught, but once the videos of hundreds of underage girls are uploaded online, they are in permanent circulation," he said.