Market Opportunities and Political Responsibilities: The Difficult Development of Chinese Private Security Companies Abroad

• Author: Andrea Ghiselli
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X18806517
• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Date: 01 January 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Market Opportunities

and Political

Responsibilities:

The Difficult Development

of Chinese Private Security

Companies Abroad

Andrea Ghiselli

1,2

Abstract

Building upon the conceptual work of Krahmann and Habermas, this study explains

how political power and market forces in China combined to create an enormous

domestic market for overseas security services and, at the same time, undermined

the full development of domestic private security companies (PSCs). The growing

responsiveness of the state to the request for protection of Chinese citizens and

assets abroad made room for the initial development of Chinese PSCs’ overseas

operations. However, the policy makers’ focus on political loyalty has inhibited the

full-fledged maturation of China’s private security industry. So far, large foreign PSCs

have been the main beneficiaries of this situation. The future development of

Chinese PSCs remains possible in a gradual and pragmatic way, but Chinese policy

makers will have to deal with important diplomatic and political questions before the

development of any “Chinese Blackwater” will be imaginable.

Keywords

private security, defense policy, China, civil–military relations

1

School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

2

TOChina Hub, Torino, Italy

Corresponding Author:

Andrea Ghiselli, School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, Handan Road,

No. 220 Room 716, Shanghai 200433, China.

Email: andreaghiselli@fudan.edu.cn

Armed Forces & Society

2020, Vol. 46(1) 25-45

ªThe Author(s) 2018

Article reuse guidelines:

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DOI: 10.1177/0095327X18806517

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During a speech in August 1927, the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong declared that

“political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” (G. C. Li, 1995, pp. 325, 326). Although

the original symbiotic relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the Peo-

ple’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been replaced with a more traditional, Huntington-

style objective control of the civilian leadership over the armed forces since the 1990s

(Kiselycznyk & Saunders, 2010, pp. 13, 14; Miller, 2015), the key principle at the core of

Mao’s statement is still valid today.

1

Indeed, while the PLA has always reported solely to

the Chinese Communist Party, the paramilitary People’s Armed Police was under the

control of both the State Council and the Party up until January 1, 2018. That day, its

complete command was transferred to the Party’s Central Military Commission. This

move sends a clear signal about the exclusivity of the relationship between political

power and “the gun” and about who is in charge of protecting the co untrya nd its people.

Yet, in a context where it seems there is no space for actors not directly and explicitly

controlled by the Party, private security companies (PSCs) have become increasingly

active actors in Chinese foreign policy. Indeed, China’s market for overseas security

services is booming (growing from US$2.4 billion in 2005 to US$11.5 billion in 2015),

fueled by the rich contracts offered by Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) that both

local and foreign PSCs ruthlessly compete to win. The launch of the Belt and Road

Initiative in 2013, a multibillion-dollar plan aimed at integrating the Eurasian continent

with new railways and ports, has further intensified the competition by making unstable

regions like the Middle East and Central Asia targets for large-scale investments. Hence,

how is the combination of abundant economic opportunities and heavy politicization

influencing the development of Chinese PSCs and their role in Chinese foreignpolicy?

Given the global scaleof China’s diplomacy and the massive size of itsmarket for

security, its approach to the use of PSCs can have important consequences for world

affairs. This includes setting the standards of an extremely lucrative and sensitive

industry to, eventually, the evolution of conflicts and crises through the deployment

of private proxies. Unfortunately, similarly to studies on the private security industry

in other non-Western countries (Barak & David, 2010),the literature relating to China

is largely composed of journalistic articles, which often use sensationalistic tones to

narrate stories and are mostly based on speculations. There are very few detailed, but

largely descriptive, academic studies on this topic (Arduino, 2018; Zi, 2015). Within

the Western debate on Chinese PSCs, there is a general tendency to view their

development into something similar to their Western counterparts as inevitable. At

least partially,this is because there has been no substantial attempt so far to studythem

in a theoretically informed way. This article aims at being among the first to do so.

A Framework to Understand the Development of Chinese

PSCs

The issue of political control over the means of violence lies at the core of this

article’s research question. Thus, it is necessary to move beyond studies that take for

26 Armed Forces & Society 46(1)