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.
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. 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.
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.