(Reuters) – Vanuatu Prime Minister Charlot Salwai visited technology company Huawei in Shenzhen and viewed surveillance technology used to enhance policing and reduce criminal activity, his office said in a statement on Tuesday.
Salwai is visiting China before travelling to a Pacific Island leaders meeting in Japan next week.
China is Vanuatu’s largest external creditor and a major infrastructure provider. Vanuatu’s biggest aid donor and policing partner Australia has expressed concern at China’s security ambitions in the Pacific Islands region after Beijing struck a policing equipment deal with Vanuatu last year and a security pact with Solomon Islands.
Huawei provided digital systems to cities like Port Vila, the Vanuatu capital, to “reduce criminal activity”, a Vanuatu government statement posted to social media said.
The police surveillance system required a data centre in Vanuatu, it added. It was not clear if the Huawei police surveillance system was already in use in Port Vila, or was being considered.
A spokesman from the Vanuatu prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Vanuatu has a population of around 300,000 across an archipelago, with some 50,000 living in the capital Port Vila.
(Reporting by Kirsty Needham; Editing by Michael Perry)
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