Rwanda and the African Union counterterrorism programme have ongoing relationships with the Shandong Police College in China. Fujian Police College launched a training programme in South Africa in 2019 for the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department with plans for replication in other police metros to buttress growing Chinese influence in the security sector.

This latter engagement was received with some reservation by the public since a rogue police unit created by the former Minister of Police was sent to the elite Chinese People’s Armed Forces Academy for training in 2016. The unit was then illegally deployed into South Africa’s top security agencies reportedly as a “hit squad,” to intimidate and assassinate political rivals.

While it was disbanded by the Ramaphosa administration, the story underlined the dangers of unscrupulous officials collaborating with their Chinese counterparts to create non-statutory forces.

Fujian Police College has also trained the Central African Republic’s presidential guard. The presidential guard is composed almost entirely of President Faustin Touadéra’s kinsmen and has been implicated in a long list of atrocities, including shooting and wounding 10 United Nations peacekeepers in 2021.

The “no questions asked” stance of China’s police engagements is worrisome since providing training to police, presidential guard, and intelligence services known for sectarianism, abuse and lack of reform incentives may exacerbate the problem.

In 2021, for example, Kenya launched a programme to send 400 police, paramilitary, and law enforcement personnel to China’s police schools for training annually even though abuse and impunity in the Kenyan police are well documented.

Those pushing for higher standards argue that context matters. This is especially crucial as police, intelligence, and paramilitaries are among the most feared and corrupt institutions in Africa. Hence the debate on the implications of such training will intensify as the scale of Chinese engagements in the public security and law enforcement space increases.

Some of this training has relocated to Africa to reach more trainees and increase the uptake of norms and lessons taught in Chinese schools. A joint program of Algeria’s Ministry of Interior and Local Authorities and the Chinese Academy of Governance (CAG) graduated over 400 Algerian police, law enforcement, and civil service personnel between 2015 and 2018. CAG has trained similar cohorts from South Africa which also has a memorandum of understanding with China’s MPS.

Technical disciplines within the Chinese police system are taught within the larger context of China’s political system. The CCP’s definition of terrorism, for example, derives in part from weiwen. This includes curbing anti-government uprisings and what the CCP calls the “three evils” (san gu shili: terrorism, “splitism” or separatism and religious extremism. This approach, in turn, informs China’s international counterterrorism partnerships.

China’s export of security terminologies like “terrorism” and broader norm diffusion is aided by similarities in structure between Chinese and African police. African police entities are centralised under the executive and overseen by an interior, police or public security minister like in China.

Most African police are also part of the national security architecture and tend to be highly militarized in their basic organization, ranking system, and work methods.

Many African police jurisdictions, furthermore, are organised into “commands,” and it is common for police to deploy into the military and vice versa. In practice, African police (as well as intelligence and paramilitaries) often exhibit party and regime loyalties. In China, this is formalised with the police, the Ministry of Public Security (the PAP’s administrative agent), the PLA and China’s other armed forces all serving as instruments of the CCP.

China has a particularly receptive audience among some African leaders concerned with regime survival. They admire the CCP’s methods of control and its ubiquitous and expansive police-state machinery (jingchaguojia jiqi) that dwarfs the PLA’s budget.

The past decade witnessed a steady growth of independent African scholarly networks on Africa-China relations, including security assistance. This has stimulated more informed debates and policy advocacy aimed at African governments and the AU. This, therefore, may be a critical point of departure between African and Chinese approaches. China’s model of engagement is mostly elite driven, meaning its police and law enforcement work is secretive and rarely debated in the media or by parliamentarians and citizens.

African human rights groups argue that the training and equipping of security units implicated in human rights violations magnifies negative sentiments toward their benefactors and China should therefore tread carefully. These very forces are often called upon to suppress those at the forefront of political reform, mostly young people.

Meanwhile, Africa is the world’s youngest continent with 60 per cent of the population below 25 years of age. According to Afrobarometer, half of all respondents across 28 African countries (51 per cent) say China’s economic and political influence is positive. While this is a drop from 61 per cent in the 2019 survey, it is still significant.

Steady majorities of African citizens also demand democracy: 80 per cent reject one-party rule, 75 per cent reject authoritarian rule, and 70 per cent want to live in a democratic society. These demands rise sharply in the 18-25, 26-35 and 36-45 cohorts, the very population segments China is investing heavily in courting through an array of soft power tools.

Hence there are significant reputational risks to pursuing a policy that does not require recipients of security assistance to be accountable and ethical in employing the training, equipment, and capacity-building they receive.

The uptake of CCP norms is not a given. However, the architecture for their diffusion is robust. On its current trajectory, China’s security assistance will continue to trigger fears that it enables unpopular regimes and the security forces keeping them in power. Calls for policy changes will grow louder in light of these fears.

Media, civil society, and independent networks all have roles to play in monitoring external security assistance, creating awareness, and promoting accountability. China has enjoyed broad popularity in Africa over the years, largely because of the economic, educational and human resource development opportunities it is perceived to bring.

Yet, Africans have reservations regarding key CCP norms including absolute party control over politics, security, and the state. These are concerns African governments should be mindful of lest they lose the confidence of those in whose name they govern.

• A Tell / Africa Centre for Strategic Studies report