If you have a law-and-order problem, as Kiribati seems to, inviting a powerful gang to help fix it for you may seem practical until the gang starts demanding more from you than you had bargained for.
Kiribati, an island nation 313 square miles small located between Papua New Guinea and Hawaii, is getting China’s help with policing and IT. (And IT? Information technology? That IT? Sure, Kiribati, let CCP tech guys futz around in your computers. But don’t be surprised, later.)
Voice of America says (February 27, 2024):
U.S. lawmakers are voicing concern about the Pacific island nation of Kiribati’s use of police from China for security, just as the U.S. State Department warns that such cooperation could bring new risks to Kiribati, a neighbor of Hawaii.
On Friday, Eeri Aritiera, Kiribati’s acting police commissioner, told Reuters that a Chinese police delegation will rotate through the island nation to “provide assistance” to Kiribati’s Community Policing program and IT department.
Among the many worried comments expressed by U.S. officials is that of U.S. Representative Michele Steel, who says that the CCP does not value human life and “will most certainly intend to use Kiribati’s strategic position to their advantage.” Steel is a member of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.
China is also a “public safety partner” with other Pacific nations “experiencing instability,” like riots. Of course, the Chinese Communist Party has plenty of experience with riot-quelling and with preventing further unrest in vast regions by working overtime to destroy culture and vestiges of autonomy of those regions during the post-riot years.
Chinese “police” operating in foreign lands have also excelled at kidnapping Chinese nationals who may believe that they have escaped China. Let’s hope that there are no such escapees residing in Kiribati.
Not every Pacific nation accepts or continues to accept the bad bargain. VOA reports that in January 2023, “after 12 years of cooperation with Beijing on policing, Fiji’s newly elected prime minister—Sitiveni Rabuka—fired the country’s police commissioner and promised to end a police training agreement that allowed Chinese police officers to be stationed in Fiji.”
The U.S. also has a presence in Kiribati. Our State Department says that the United States conducts police training there. Maybe the Americans doing the training can add “watch out for CCP thugs posing as cops and IT tech guys” to the training tips.
