[Source: Reuters]

The United States on Monday cautioned Pacific Islands nations against assistance from Chinese security forces after Reuters reported that Chinese police are working in the remote atoll nation of Kiribati, a neighbor of Hawaii.

Kiribati’s acting police commissioner Eeri Aritiera told Reuters last week uniformed Chinese officers were working with police in community policing and a crime database program.

Kiribati is a nation of 115,000 people whose closest island is 2,160 km (1,340 miles) south of Honolulu, and the news comes as Beijing renews a push to expand security ties in the Pacific Islands in an intensifying rivalry with the United States.

Asked to comment on the Reuters report, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department responded using the abbreviation of the People’s Republic of China: “We do not believe importing security forces from the PRC will help any Pacific Island country.  Instead, doing so risks fueling regional and international tensions.”