天网 (Tiānwǎng): Skynet (China's nationwide CCTV…

Meanings

1 Skynet (China's nationwide CCTV / facial-recognition surveillance system)
2 (literary) the net of Heaven, the net of justice from which no wrongdoer escapes

Characters

天

Examples

天网工程已经覆盖了全国主要城市。

Tiānwǎng gōngchéng yǐjīng fùgài le quánguó zhǔyào chéngshì.

The Skynet project already covers all major cities in the country.

俗话说，天网恢恢，疏而不漏。

Súhuà shuō, tiānwǎng huīhuī, shū ér bú lòu.

As the saying goes, Heaven's net is vast — wide-meshed but nothing slips through.

Tips

history

The classical sense comes from 《老子》 chapter 73: 天网恢恢，疏而不失 — 'Heaven's net is vast and loose, yet loses nothing'. The same name was repurposed in 2005 for the Public Security Bureau's nationwide CCTV grid, deliberately echoing the moral-justice idiom.

culture

Naming collision worth knowing: 'Skynet' is also the rogue AI from the Terminator movies, and Chinese netizens enjoy the overlap when discussing surveillance.