In recent years, we have heard from time to time such things as "Chinese ships were hijacked in the Indian Ocean", "Chinese companies were robbed in Sudan", "Chinese workers were attacked by militants on a construction site in Afghanistan", "Chinese company employees were kidnapped by militants at a construction site in Sudan", "Chinese company employees were attacked at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Mali, an African country", "Chinese employees were attacked by buses in Pakistan", accompanied by Chinese companies "going global" With the acceleration of the pace and the rapid increase of overseas projects and assets of Chinese companies, the personal and property safety of corporate employees has become a major headache.
As more and more projects along the Belt and Road Initiative are progressing as planned, the urgency of protecting the safety of citizens outside China is particularly urgent, and it is urgent to take proactive preventive measures. In the early days, Chinese companies had to spend a lot of money to hire private security companies from British and American countries, but there were many difficulties in dealing with them. According to industry insiders, first, some Chinese-funded enterprises are worried about leaking trade secrets. Second, the high cost of Western security services makes it difficult for many companies to afford them. What's more, some of the practices of Western security guards who only take money and do not really do things are difficult for Chinese companies to accept.
Goncharov, president of the Association of Veterans of the International Alpha anti-terrorist organization and a member of the Russian House of Society, said: "By all accounts, it is likely that [China's] private security companies will take on this task." Businessmen who inject huge sums of money have to find ways to ensure their safety. China's private security companies are the most promising to protect the New Silk Road. ”
At the beginning of this century, Chinese companies began to set up small security agencies to protect their overseas projects. Its members are all veterans and police officers. They have protected Chinese oil projects in Iraq. It is estimated that today Chinese security organizations are working in dozens of countries.
According to Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, China intends to further develop its own private security companies to ensure the safety of overseas projects in areas with a poor global security environment.
Ensuring the safety of Chinese citizens and businesses was discussed at a seminar organized by the China-Africa Chamber of Commerce and the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations in Beijing. The seminar was attended by CEFC Zhongan Group, China's largest security company, Anbang Escort Group, a company listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, and Dulwich International Security Group, a subsidiary of Frontier Services Group, a company listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
According to the report, there are currently about 470,000 companies with Chinese capital backgrounds operate in countries around the world. They are primarily engaged in energy, mining, infrastructure construction, and manufacturing projects. According to a 2022 report published by China's Ministry of Commerce, these companies employ a total of 4.1 million people, of whom 2.5 million are foreign nationals.
Both in terms of scale and ability to communicate with the outside world, domestic private security companies still need to be vigorously developed. It is understood that China's private security companies are facing practical difficulties in "going global" in terms of funding, insufficient intelligence support, foreign languages, and laws. Some companies in China invite their British and American counterparts to train their own personnel, but also want to learn from the experience and accelerate growth.
Even China's largest security companies lag far behind their foreign competitors in terms of experience and scale, the report said. For example, as of the end of 2022, Frontier Services Group's annual revenue was 1$2.3 billion, the annual revenue of the British private military company G4S is about $20 billion, and the size of the global security market has reached hundreds of billions of dollars.