Minnaar said the training would assist officers with unarmed and self-defence measures, especially when arresting suspects.

Also covered in the course were firearm skills, tactical entries of buildings and techniques to “restrain aggressive armed suspects when approaching a stolen or hijacked vehicle”, Minnaar said.

That sort of training was especially important in Johannesburg, which is notorious for its high rates of vehicle-related crimes, including deadly hijackings.

There were 27 arrests for vehicle theft and hijacking in July alone, Minnaar said.

The training was facilitated through the Chinese embassy at no cost to Johannesburg city.

The 28 trainees who completed the two-week course – 30 having begun it – were awarded a certificate in “Police Use of Force” from China’s Ministry of Public Security.

The Chinese delegation was led by the college’s vice-president Zheng Xiaoqiang, and was the first cooperative programme between Johannesburg and China.

Fujian Police College takes in more than 5,000 undergraduate students every year, in addition to the more than 7,000 police officers who train there.

Johannesburg city officials hope it will lead to two-way exchanges and more training from Chinese experts, perhaps replicated for metro police in other major South African urban centres.

“We identified areas within the Johannesburg Metro police training where officers could benefit from further training,” said Yao-Heng Michael Sun, a member of city’s mayoral committee who started the training initiative.

“We looked internally and externally for partners to help us in developing the capacity of our officers.

“I began talking with the Chinese embassy (in South Africa) and the Chinese authorities responded very well, offering to send a delegation of eight trainers from the Fujian Police College – which trains all of China’s police officers, as well as many international police officers, in public security policing.”

Taiwan-born Sun, who has lived in South Africa since he was 12, is responsible for the city’s public safety portfolio.

His other priorities include the eradication of corruption within the JMPD and improving the city’s traffic management.

Though they have some overlapping roles, JMPD is slightly different from the South African Police Service, which has greater powers to investigate crimes.

The two police forces teamed up recently to carry out raids on hundreds of the city’s street vendors for counterfeit and other illegal goods.

Outnumbered by angry vendors, they were forced to abort the operation when they were attacked with rocks and other objects.

A second police raid netted millions of dollars worth of illegal items, including Israeli-made automatic weapons.

Some police who allegedly attempted to sell goods back to vendors were caught in a subsequent operation targeting corruption.

The Chinese training programme, vendor raids and police sting were a small part of a much larger effort by the opposition Democratic Alliance-run city to restore law and order and fix its reputation for safety and liveability.

Helmoed Römer Heitman, a South African defence analyst, said local police had benefited from foreign expertise before.

“We found that was so when French public safety experts came here ahead of the 2010 Soccer World Cup to help train our police deal with large crowds,” he said.

“There’s no reason to doubt the usefulness of this exercise and every reason to provide our Metro police with as much training from as many experts as possible.”