It's the logical continuation of what they were already doing. Nothing has fundamentally changed, the technology has gotten better, and in some cases enabled an elaboration of the Chinese police state. They're merely putting new technology to work as it becomes available.

If you want to watch for change in behavior - increasing or reducing of oppression - in the Chinese system, look at consequences and restrictions (ie applied action derived from their policing systems), rather than things like surveillance broadly. They will always max out surveillence and awareness where they can (the people de facto have no rights, so these things are not viewed as abuses of existing rights), short of becoming a liberal Western-style democracy (which isn't going to happen). The consequences and oppression/restrictions will change depending on the regime's aims, that's where you can best judge the nature of a given government that is in power.

To use a classic surveillence example - the US Government during the Hoover era didn't voluntarily restrict its reach. They were heavily limited by the technology of the day in what they could do. As technological limitations lifted, the expansion of surveillence leapt forward accordingly. Nothing actually changed, Hoover would have been doing what the NSA is doing today, if he had the technology back then.