Sunday’s episode of 60 Minutes revealed a fascinating tension within the Fijian government about whether to embrace a 2011 agreement signed with the Chinese government that allows Fijian police officers to receive training in China and Chinese officers to be deployed to Fiji.
Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka last year suggested he wanted to scrap the memorandum of understanding, which was signed when the Fijian government was under military rule, due to differing values with the Chinese government and his desire for closer ties with the U.S, Australia and New Zealand. However, Fijian Home Affairs Minister Pio Tikoduadua wants to maintain the agreement.
The reflexive question that arises in Canberra over this tension within the Fijian government’s highest ranks is: what should Australia do?
Quite simply, we should do nothing. To even offer an opinion on what Fiji ought to do would be unhelpful. This has nothing to do with Australia or our sovereignty.
If there are lessons to be drawn from the saga of Fiji’s police cooperation with China, the most stark is that China’s idea of police cooperation has nothing to do with Australia, and little to do with Fiji for that matter.
Unlike the Solomon Islands’ security agreement with China, anyone can read Fiji’s MOU. The document looks like it was put together with input from both sides; it reflects the security and policing concerns of China and Fiji. Prominent “areas of co-operation” include: the arrest of fugitives and cybercrime, drug-related crimes and trafficking in persons.
The Age’s investigation suggests that the main preoccupation of China is control of Chinese citizens abroad, particularly those who bring harm to the mainland.
In 2017, six years after the MOU was signed, more than 70 Chinese nationals were seized from compounds in Nadi, hooded and marched onto a China Southern flight bound for Changchun in China’s north-east. Each of them was flanked by two officers. Police went so far as to make a video, set to stirring orchestral music, and it was shared on WeChat by the provincial public security department.
Though Chinese scammers had faced court in Fiji before, in this case the legal system was bypassed, and the Fijian police were bystanders in what was, in effect, a show arrest. The video shows busts carried out simultaneously in Indonesia and other parts of China – the Nadi footage is identical to these other raids.
In this video, Fiji was treated as Chinese soil for a morality play, filmed for the benefit of the Chinese public, and more importantly, for the party bosses in China who signed off on the operation.
The implications of this operation for Fiji’s sovereignty are disturbing. Chinese police now appear to be a feature of the landscape in the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, and perhaps Vanuatu, while Fiji and Papua New Guinea have police liaison officers. It’s tempting to extrapolate from this that the Australian government should take a hard line and urge all Pacific nations to reject any form of police co-operation with China. Yet, this would almost certainly backfire. We know this because it already has.
In the Solomon Islands, Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare made it clear that part of the reason he wanted security cooperation with China was Australia’s attitude that policing training “is ours”, tracing it all the way back to Alexander Downer’s refusal to allow Solomons police to be trained in Taiwan. Sogavare’s antipathy towards Australia has many other sources, but by making his enthusiasm for the security agreement about pushing back against Australia and the U.S, the idea has taken hold that these policing deals are about us. But they are not. They have nothing to do with Australian sovereignty.
These agreements are all about China’s domestic needs, and regulating Chinese citizens abroad. The broader trend is a concern for Australia, particularly in shielding our Chinese diaspora from coercion, but overall this is not about us.
Concerns that Pacific police will internalise authoritarian policing practices after a few weeks or months of training in China seem over-egged.
Another reason to think twice is that Australia itself cooperates extensively with China on policing. Less than a week ago, Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw met Wang Xiaohong, China’s Minister of Public Security, with the China looking forward to a “a new chapter in law enforcement co-operation”.
China’s interest in Australia is unsurprising – plenty of those fleeing Xi Jinping’s endless anti-corruption campaign have come to our shores. But for Australia and Fiji, here’s the rub: we need to work with Chinese law enforcement to address transnational crime in the region. The drugs flowing from Asian and Mexican syndicates hurt the Pacific and Australia. Blocking China – which often characterises the U.S approach to China in the region – won’t work on this issue. Conversations about not violating the sovereignty of Pacific nations and bringing Chinese criminals to book need to be had with Chinese officials in the room.
They might not be keen on such conversations – particularly when some of the criminals are providing them with valuable networks and intelligence – but trying to have these conversations is a better idea than offending Fiji and China just to assert our will.
Graeme Smith is a senior fellow at ANU’s Department of Pacific Affairs.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this publication.