China’s Public Sector Looks to Private Security for Help Financial Times (11/26/13) Marino, Ben As Chinas international interests have grown, so too has the private security industry designed to protect Chinese companies as they operate in less stable regions of Asia and Africa. The need to protect Chinese corporations abroad was underscored in 2012 when 25 Chinese workers were kidnapped in Egypt and another 29 were taken in the Sudan. Although all of the prisoners were released, Beijing is eager to prevent such incidents in the future. Private Chinese security companies are well-positioned to take advantage of this new risk landscape, says Alex Storrie, a political risk analyst at the U.K.s AKE Group. “We are now seeing where the employees of these companies and also the Chinese public are becoming quite concerned. Particularly with more highly professional people, such as engineers working in oil and gas, they are coming to a point where they’re saying: ‘look, we’re not going unless you offer us proper protection, because we know how dangerous it is’,” he explains. Part of this reliance on private security is the result of the Chinese militarys strict policy of non-intervention abroad. As Raffaello Pantucci, a senior research fellow at the security think tank Royal United Services Institute, points out “The [Chinese] government does not want to get stuck in awkward situations thanks to companies, so getting the companies to find ways of making themselves safer is doubtless one aspect of this development.”
Posted on: Tue, 03 Dec 2013 02:10:05 +0000