As Chinese organised crime expands in Africa, so does China’s policing footprint
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.
Chinese organised crime has a long history in Africa, but industrial-scale scam compounds are a new element. China-linked compounds have been uncovered across at least nine countries since 2020, with more assessed to be at risk.
Where the crime goes, China’s offer of policing assistance follows, and it’s often accepted. As Chinese syndicates entrenched along the Mekong River, Beijing established the Lancang-Mekong law enforcement centre in Kunming; joint river patrols with Laos, Myanmar and Thailand; and liaison relationships with Cambodia.
Beijing’s conduct across Africa follows the same pattern. China is publicly recorded as having trained police from 33 African countries, with research by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies showing that the training heavily resembles courses run in Southeast Asia. Beijing holds bilateral policing agreements with at least 24 countries and has embedded officers or runs joint operations in 10. The most recent, Madagascar, was labelled as at-risk in May and was hosting Chinese police by September.
The first issue stemming from these developments is the model Beijing is exporting.
Policing assistance sounds positive. It is, but only when it follows a democratic model in which police answer to courts, oversight bodies and the press. That is not what Beijing exports. China’s police answer solely to the CCP.
That is authoritarian policing: continuous surveillance, household-level data collection and pre-emptive intervention. Countries that learn from that model risk building forces aimed at their own populations rather than crime, leading to innocent people being surveilled, detained and silenced.
The second issue is how Beijing uses these criminal organisations.
Wan ‘Broken Tooth’ Kuok-koi, formerly the boss of the Macau 14K Triad, is now chair of the US Treasury-sanctioned World Hongmen History and Culture Association. The association, widely documented as a front for Chinese criminal activity, expanded through Southeast Asia and the Pacific on the back of the Belt and Road Initiative and is now moving into Africa.
Beijing uses these organisations as proxies to do what state actors cannot. In Palau, Wan pushed for lucrative casino developments while advocating for the country to switch recognition from Taiwan to Beijing. That’s not the only example, and similar things are happening in Africa.
The third issue is what Beijing receives from these partnerships.
They give Beijing access. Through its Fox Hunt and Sky Net campaigns, it has forcibly repatriated some 12,000 Chinese nationals from more than 120 countries. Policing partnerships make that possible. These campaigns allegedly violate international law and target dissidents and critics, not criminals.
These arrangements also increase China’s influence. They help it build relationships with the political and security elites who direct partner forces, while complementing Beijing’s existing economic, diplomatic and soft-power engagement. China is gaining this influence in Africa, whose countries hold the minerals that humanity’s energy transition depends on and a quarter of the votes at the United Nations. It’s not a continent to concede influence in quietly.
Australia’s region is no stranger to these developments. China has provided policing support to six Pacific countries and continues pressing for deeper arrangements, despite regional efforts to hold the line.
Crime is still a challenge. This is evident in Fiji, where police there still confront a drug market that Chinese criminal organisations created. As a result, in April, a fleeing vehicle carrying suspected methamphetamine drove into a police and military checkpoint outside Suva, critically injuring an officer, the daughter of Defence Minister Pio Tikoduadua, who, as home affairs minister, significantly narrowed Fiji’s policing agreement with China. Pacific countries need credible alternative sources of policing support before they can fully distance themselves from China.
Canberra has responded well so far. Decades of Australian Federal Police work, the Pacific Transnational Crime Network, the Pacific Policing Initiative and several bilateral treaties provide Pacific countries with options for protection beyond Beijing.
China’s actions in Africa resemble its Pacific strategy. Australia’s partners with the capacity to act in Africa should therefore build security partnerships similar to Canberra’s efforts in the Pacific. These partnerships should offer the kind of policing support that African governments have themselves committed to through the African Union. Meanwhile, African governments have long turned external relationships to their own ends and have every reason to hold Chinese assistance to that same standard.
Africa shows how far China can push its policing model. Canberra should help show the world how to counter it.
About Author
