The United States on Monday cautioned Pacific Islands nations against assistance from Chinese security forces after Reuters reported that Chinese police are working in the remote atoll nation of Kiribati, a neighbor of Hawaii.
Kiribati’s acting police commissioner Eeri Aritiera told Reuters last week uniformed Chinese officers were working with police in community policing and a crime database program.
Kiribati is a nation of 115,000 people whose closest island is 2,160 km (1,340 miles) south of Honolulu, and the news comes as Beijing renews a push to expand security ties in the Pacific Islands in an intensifying rivalry with the United States.
Asked to comment on the Reuters report, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department responded using the abbreviation of the People’s Republic of China: “We do not believe importing security forces from the PRC will help any Pacific Island country. Instead, doing so risks fueling regional and international tensions.”
The official added that Washington did not tolerate China’s “transnational repression efforts,” including its attempts to establish police stations around the world.
“We are concerned about the potential implications security agreements and security-related cyber cooperation with the PRC may have for any Pacific Island nation’s autonomy,” the spokesperson said.
Kiribati is considered strategic not only given its relatively proximity to Hawaii, but because it has one of world’s biggest exclusive economic zones, covering more than 3.5 million square km (1.35 million square miles) of the Pacific.