China is exporting its policing model, and organised crime gets it in the door. Beijing now has policing arrangements across most of Africa, and the same expansion is well underway in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. So far, Australia has built a working counter in its own region, and it is a model others can draw on.
This matters for three reasons. Beijing is exporting a model of policing that protects governments rather than communities. It uses criminal networks abroad as proxies where a state actor cannot be seen to act. These partnerships give it access to partner forces, reach over diaspora communities, and influence.
Successive crackdowns have pushed Chinese crime syndicates outward. Many of these groups, known as Triads, were pushed from the mainland during the Chinese Communist Party’s 1950s suppression campaigns, into Hong Kong and Macau, then to Myanmar’s border regions, where they now run industrial-scale scam operations. Continued pressure is pushing them further abroad to Africa.
by The Strategist – As Chinese organised crime expands in Africa, so does China’s policing footprint
