“Among all poultry, geese [are known] for being extremely vigilant and having excellent hearing,” Zhang Quansheng, a police chief in Xinjiang’s Shawan county, told the newspaper.

The People’s Daily said the “sharp, keen and brave” animals were proving an invaluable tool in Xinjiang’s war on crime and were now being “actively promoted” across the region.

Law enforcement agents described the geese as a new “highlight of stability maintenance work” and said they had proved themselves “better than dogs” in tackling crime.

“Geese are very brave. They spread their wings and will attack any strangers entering [someone’s] home,” said Mr Zhang, the local police chief.

The birds were like “a radar that does not need power”, he added.

“In some ways, they are more useful than dogs. A household normally keeps one dog [but] an intruder can throw a drugged bun to kill the dog. Geese are normally kept in groups and they have poor eyesight at night making it very difficult for intruders to [poison them].”

Authorities in Shawan county say their goose-stepping recruits have at least brought a measure of security to the troubled region.

In June, one gaggle of police geese reportedly managed to snare a man who had broken into the local police headquarters to take a motorbike, the People’s Daily reported.

After drugging two police dogs and climbing over the wall, the man was about to make his getaway when he came face-to-face with some 20 feathered “gatekeepers.”

“The geese fanned their wings and began shrieking when they saw the stranger. The duty officer woke up and the thief was caught red handed.”

A Uighur man looks on as a truck carrying paramilitary policemen travel along a street in Urumqi, Xinjiang Thomson Reuters

Xinjiang is one of China’s most volatile regions. In recent years the province has suffered repeated outbreaks of inter-ethnic violence between Han Chinese and Uighurs, a mostly Muslim, Turkic-speaking group who make-up nearly half of the province’s 22 million population.

Tensions between the two groups have been running high since 2009, when nearly 200 lives were lost during rioting in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi.

Last month there was renewed violence when at least 35 people died during confrontations in Turpan, around 140 miles from the capital.

Beijing blamed the killings on religious “extremists” and “terrorists” and Zhang Chunxia, the provincial party chief, ordered Xinjiang’s security forces to launch “a high-pressure attack” on those responsible.

In the wake of the latest round of violence, units of heavily armed police have reportedly flooded parts of Xinjiang and the province’s geese officers have not been tasked with confronting simmering ethnic tensions.