What motivates secondary states to cooperate with a rising policing power, and in what forms does such cooperation occur? While the rise of China has been widely studied in economic and military domains, its expanding role in international policing remains underexplored, particularly in the Global South. Existing studies largely examine international police cooperation as an instrument of China’s foreign policy, through which Beijing extends its influence via internal security governance. However, this scholarship pays comparatively little attention to the demand side—namely, why recipient states choose to cooperate with China. To mitigate this gap, the paper develops a two-stage theoretical framework that explains both the motivations for and patterns of international police cooperation from the perspective of recipient states. First, it argues that states’ decisions to cooperate with China are shaped by the interaction between security interdependence and alignment with China. Countries facing high levels of cross-border security challenges (such as those in the Mekong subregion) are more likely to engage in cooperation driven by functional need. In contrast, states without such interdependence may still pursue cooperation, yet the motivation would be driven by their demand either practically or strategically, as illustrated by the Philippines under Duterte. Second, the paper distinguishes between two primary forms of cooperation: information sharing (which is the basis for further operational collaboration) and capacity-building assistance (e.g., training and equipment provision). These patterns are shaped by the interaction between motivations and state capacity, with aid-reliant states (i.e., those with lower capacity) more likely to engage in police cooperation through assistance-based arrangements, as illustrated by the Solomon Islands after 2019. By conceptualising policing as a domain of international security governance, this paper contributes to international relations theory by highlighting the role of police cooperation as a distinct form of statecraft, particularly in non-Western contexts.
