Chinese police are working in the remote atoll nation of Kiribati in the Pacific Ocean, with uniformed officers involved in community policing and a crime database program, Kiribati officials told Reuters.
Kiribati has not publicly announced the policing deal with China, which comes as Beijing renews a push to expand security ties in the Pacific Islands in an intensifying rivalry with the US.
Kiribati, a nation of 115,000, is considered strategic despite being small, as it is relatively close to Hawaii and controls one of the biggest exclusive economic zones in the world, covering more than 3.5 million square kilometers of the Pacific.
Photo: Reuters
It hosts a Japanese satellite tracking station.
Kiribati Acting Police Commissioner Eeri Aritiera told Reuters that the Chinese police on the island work with local police, but there was no Chinese police station in Kiribati.
“The Chinese police delegation team work with the Kiribati Police Service — to assist on Community Policing program and Martial Arts (Tai Chi) Kung Fu, and IT department assisting our crime database program,” he said in an e-mail.
The Chinese embassy in Kiribati did not respond to a Reuters request for comment on the role of its police. In a January social media post the embassy named the leader of “the Chinese police station in Kiribati.”
Aritiera, who attended a December last year meeting between Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) and several Pacific Islands police officials in Beijing, said Kiribati had requested China’s policing assistance in 2022.
Up to a dozen uniformed Chinese police arrived last year on a six-month rotation.
“They only provide the service that the Kiribati Police Service needs or request,” Aritiera said.
The Kiribati president’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
China’s efforts to strike a security and trade deal in the region, where it is a major infrastructure lender, were rejected by the Pacific Islands Forum in 2022.
However, Chinese police have deployed in the Solomon Islands since 2022, after the two nations signed a secret security pact criticized by Washington and Canberra as undermining regional stability.
Australian National University Pacific expert Graeme Smith said that China is seeking to extend its reach over the Chinese diaspora, and police were “very useful eyes and ears” abroad.
“It is about extraterritorial control,” Smith said.
Chinese police would also “have eyes on Kiribati’s domestic politics and its diplomatic partners.”
Aritiera said the Chinese police were not involved in security for Chinese citizens on the island.
China’s ambassador to Australia last month said that China had a strategy to form policing ties with Pacific Island nations to help maintain social order and this should not cause Australia anxiety.
Kiribati switched ties from Taiwan to Beijing in 2019, with Kiribati President Taneti Maamau encouraging Chinese investment in infrastructure. It is to hold a national election this year.
China built a large embassy on the main island, and sent agricultural and medical teams. It also announced plans to rebuild a World War II US military airstrip on Kiribati’s Kanton Island, prompting concern in Washington. The airstrip has not been built.
The US countered with a pledge in October last year to upgrade the wharf on Kanton Island, a former US military base, and said it wants to open an embassy in Kiribati.
Lowy Institute Pacific Islands Program director Meg Keen said that China has security ambitions in the region.
“Australia and the United States are concerned about that prospect, in Kiribati and around the region, and are taking measures to protect their position,” she said.
A spokeswoman for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs said that Canberra is working to meet Kiribati’s security needs and had donated two patrol boats.
“Australia is supporting the Kiribati Police Service with major upgrades to its policing infrastructure, including a new barracks, and headquarters and radio network,” she said.
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