A facial recognition system, which can scan China's population in a second, is being used in 16 Chinese cities and provinces to help police crack down on criminals and improve security.

By using motion facial recognition technology, the system, called "Sky Net", can accurately identify people's faces from different angles and lighting conditions, among others. The system is fast enough to scan China's population in just one second, and it takes two seconds to scan the world's population, Worker's Daily reported.

Facial recognition system in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan Province. (Photo: VCG)

Speed does not affect the system's accuracy. Its accuracy rate is up to 99.8 percent even if the person is in motion, it reported.

The system is being used in 16 provinces, cities and municipalities, Yuan Peijiang, one of the system's developers, told the Worker's Daily. 

Surveillance cameras in the streets provide police with the location of suspects and missing people; and it follows people's tracks, which may offer police more valuable information, Yuan said.

In the past two years, police arrested more than 2,000 fugitives with the help of Sky Net, the newspaper reported.

It also helped find missing people. In June 2017, the system managed to build facial data of a missing girl in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region simply by scanning the six-year-old girl's photo taken several years ago. The girl was found after she was recorded by a surveillance camera in front of a market.