GLOBAL car giants are feeding real-time information from electric vehicles to China's 'big brother' government, it's been reported.

The revelations come as President Xi Jinping is accused of stepping up the use of tech to track the movements of his citizens.

More than 200 car makers - including Tesla, Volkswagen, BMW, Ford, Nissan, and Mitsubishi - have been passing on the info.

The Associated Press has revealed they have been sending at least 61 data points to government-backed monitoring platforms.

However, the auto manufacturers say they are merely complying with local laws, which only apply to alternative energy vehicles.

And Chinese officials say the data is only used for analytics to improve public safety, infrastructure planning and prevent fraud.

But critics say the information collected exceeds those goals and could even be used for surveillance purposes.

Under Xi, China has been accused of using tech to "police" anything perceived threats to the ruling Communist Party.

Ding Xiaohua, of the Shanghai Electric Vehicle Public Data Collecting, Monitoring and Research Centre said it is not facilitating state surveillance.

However, data can be shared with police, prosecutors or courts, if a formal request is made.