By Ha Er-rui | 2026-07-08

Solomon Islands is moving to sideline parts of China's policing program as its new government reviews a controversial 2022 security pact with Beijing and seeks to improve relations with development partners.

Prime Minister Matthew Wale told Australian leaders during a visit to Canberra in June that his government would revisit the agreement signed by the previous government and seek to reset ties with Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Solomon Islands Minister for National Planning and Development Coordination Peter Kenilorea Jr. told the newspaper the new government intended to move away from the previous administration's pro-China posture and pursue "a rebalancing of relations" with development partners.

A central part of that shift is reducing the role of Chinese police in Solomon Islands' domestic security.

Security pact

Beijing has expanded its engagement with Pacific island nations in recent years as it seeks to extend its strategic reach beyond the U.S.-led "first island chain." Solomon Islands has become one of the key targets of that outreach.

Solomon Islands has no military, only a police force. Internal security and social cohesion were identified as priorities in the country's 2020 National Security Strategy, prompting Honiara to seek security cooperation with foreign partners regardless of political alignment, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

Solomon Islands signed a security framework agreement with China in 2022, allowing Beijing to help train its police force. The agreement has never been made public.

But the pact allowed Solomon Islands to request that China send "police, armed police, military personnel and other law enforcement and armed forces" to restore social order and protect Chinese personnel and projects in the country, according to screenshots of the draft agreement that University of New Zealand security studies professor Anna Powles tweeted in 2022.

Australia and New Zealand traditionally provided much of the assistance received by the islands' police force.

Chinese police training in the island country has expanded sharply since the 2022 pact. China has delivered at least 70 police training programs for Solomon Islands since 2022, including courses for provincial forces and training held in China, according to the IISS.

Community policing

China has introduced a community policing model to the islands that analysts say goes beyond earlier foreign police assistance.

Since 2025, Chinese police have promoted fingerprint collection and household registration in Solomon Islands and urged citizens to monitor one another. The program exports China's domestic social-control model to the Pacific nation, say critics.

The approach is based on the "Fengqiao Experience," Chinese police inspector Lin Jiamu said, according to a Royal Solomon Islands Police Force statement last September. Aspects of the training include teaching civilians about "collecting basic community information, population management, self-protection, and resolving conflicts and disputes on their own so as to obtain a safer community environment," the statement said.

The Fengqiao Experience is a Maoist concept dating to 1962. According to the Chinese Communist Party journal Qiushi, it involves mobilizing the public toward "preventing and mitigating social risks of all kinds and safeguarding national security."

Chinese President Xi Jinping revived the concept in 2013 to strengthen domestic control, according to IISS.

Surveillance concerns

The previous Solomon Islands government's embrace of those methods unsettled local politicians and neighboring countries, including Australia, over concerns that Honiara could gain tools to suppress civil liberties.

Kenilorea raised concerns last year, saying China's approach had already infringed on privacy.

"The security space, in my own personal opinion, is a little bit too crowded for a small country like the Solomons. So I would definitely emphasize the development aspect of China's involvement," Kenilorea said, according to a Sydney Morning Herald article in June.

The Fengqiao model's use of "monitoring and coercion" undermined social harmony and the traditional authority of village chiefs in addressing disputes, Celsus Talifilu, Prime Minister Wale's special secretary, wrote in a blog post, according to The New York Times.

"This is against our norms," he told The Times in Honiara. "People will not take lightly to being spied on by their neighbors."

A report released in May by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime found Solomon Islands had "emerged as China's most prominent policing partner in the Pacific."

"The relationship includes training, equipment, advisory presence and high-level political signaling," the report found.

Security model

"China is trying to rewrite the standards of what global security is and which countries are the best at providing it," University of Texas at Austin political science professor Sheena Chestnut Greitens told The Times.

Beijing may be seeking to improve the global image of its authoritarian system by exporting police training, said Greitens.

"It allows China to portray their system as a public safety success rather than a human rights failure," she said.