What’s behind China’s overseas policing drive?

So China wants to make the world more ‘safe, reasonable and efficient’ by training thousands of police officers from across the globe to ‘help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities’. The offer came this week from Wang Xiaohong, China’s minister for public security, at a police forum attended by officials from 122 countries in the eastern city of Lianyungang.

There were few details, but then few are needed. Authoritarian countries will see China’s frequently brutal approach to law and order, coupled with its zero tolerance for dissent, as rather appealing – and many will already have invested in the technical side of China’s surveillance state. However, even the most thuggish admirers of the China model should pause for thought, because as is usually the way with the Chinese communist party, self-interest is paramount. The party is deeply concerned about the fate of many of its global investments, which are now going sour, and the ability of some of the biggest recipients of its largesse to protect Chinese assets.

At a less well-reported meeting in Beijing late last year, organised by the China-Africa Business Council, officials pushed for the rapid expansion of Chinese private security firms.