Yet Beijing’s introduction of Mao-era community policing into Solomon Islands last week was a sharp departure from this tradition. While China’s so-called community policing initiative in Honiara may sound benign, it’s anything but. Exporting its surveillance-heavy policing model secures tactical influence over Solomon Islands’ politics and begins to reshape regional norms. It will require reasserting the principle that Pacific policing is about people, not politics. Pacific policing has always been about the people.