Abstract
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) evolving roadmap is filled by flashpoints. As China is becoming the leading world economy there is an increasing call for active participation in stabilization process and security involvement. Free riding from the US security umbrella is over. One answer is the involvement of private security providers. Since the 1990s the re-emergence of private security companies (PSCs) and the private security and military industry has been facilitated by the restructuring of the peace dividends brought by the end of the Cold War. One of the several problems related to PSCs began with the lack of an unambiguous and mutually agreed definition of what a private security firm really is. The Chinese Mainland private security market is starting now to move from an informal and fragmented setting to a more mature sector.
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Notes
- 1.
The International Code of Conduct Association under the omen of the Swiss government established in the 2010, a regulatory framework as part of the Montreux in order to standardize the PMSCs.
- 2.
- 3.
Beijing Yindun Security Services Co. Ltd., Huawei International Security Services Co. Ltd. and Hua Xin Zhong An Security Services (Beijing).
- 4.
- 5.
The central government plans budget for 2015 public security amounts to 154.2 billion yuan ($24.6 billion) according to a Finance Ministry report distributed Thursday before the start of the annual session of the National People’s Congress.
- 6.
Regulation on the Administration of Security and Guarding Services, adopted in 2009 via State Council Order No. 564, Article 1. English translation http://www.lawinfochina.com/display.aspx?lib=law&id=7779
- 7.
Ibid. Article 8.
- 8.
Ibid. Article 45.
- 9.
Regulation on the Administration of Use of Guns by Full-time Guards and Escorts Decree adopted in 2002 via No. 356 of the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, English translation http://www.lawinfochina.com/Display.aspx?lib=law&Cgid=40814
- 10.
Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade archives: http://foreignminister.gov.au/releases/2009/fa-s090709.html
- 11.
American Security Company
founded in 1997 as Blackwater USA, providing security services ranging from training to private military, was renamed Xe Services in 2009 and has been sold and rebranded as Academi in 2011. Subsequently, Academi has been acquired by Constellis Holding also owner of a similar PMC, Triple Canopy.
- 12.
In the year 2007 in Baghdad, 17 Iraqi civilians are shot dead by Blackwater’s contractors covering an armoured convoy. At the end of 2014, the US Federal district court convicted four of the contractors for murder, manslaughter and weapons charges.
- 13.
‘Baptized in its modern form after the 1991 Gulf War, the hybrid threat construct is a sophisticated amalgam of unrestricted threat activities that have resisted codification and generated a labyrinth of contradictory explanation. The hybrid concept bypasses the cognitive boundaries of traditional threat characterization and the application of organized collective violence’ (Major Brian P. Fleming , U.S. Army 2011).
- 14.
Rupert Smith ‘The Utility of Force . The Art of War in the Modern World’ 2006 Penguin.
- 15.
Interview with Chinese Contractors Association Beijing in November 2015 (disambiguation: the term ‘contractor’ in this association is related to the contractors involved in infrastructure projects and related subcontracting and not exclusively to security contractors).
- 16.
The Chinese army during the 1920s was remarkably well armed and equipped. Bruce Elleman ‘Modern Chinese Warfare, 1795–1989’ Warfare and History Routledge 2001.
- 17.
‘… from about 500,000 in 1916 to 700,000 a year later. By 1922, when the major war began there were 1.2 million men under arms … in the 1925 this figure had risen to 1.4 million. As the fighting between Nationalists and the Northern Warlords began in earnest in 1926 this figure has risen to 1.6 million and it reached more than 2 million by the end of those campaigns.’ Philip Jowett ‘Chinese Warlord Armies 1911–1930’ (2010) Osprey Publishing.
- 18.
Ibid.
- 19.
Department of Defense United States of America, Annual Report to Congress ‘Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2016’ April 26, 2016.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
Article 47 of Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I).
- 22.
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Rule 108. https://ihldatabases.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_rul_rule108
- 23.
International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries art. 1, December 4, 1989, 2163 U.N.T.S. 75; also UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s address to urgently review its use of mercenaries to carry out security and peacekeeping work ahead of the 2013 General Assembly. ‘UN Unions believe this practice is damaging the UN and putting staff at increasing risk, and taking place against the worrying backdrop of an attack on staff employment rights by UN management.’ http://staffcoordinatingcouncil.org/attachments/article/191/UN%20report%20working%20group%20mercenaries.pdf
- 24.
‘They also seemed to have captured the attention of the wider Chinese populace; one blog post reposted in a Global Times article called by name for the Snow Leopards to be sent to Sudan to rescue a group of 29 kidnapped Chinese.’ https://jamestown.org/program/assessing-chinas-response-options-to-kidnappings-abroad/#sthash.vYSZ3knS.dpuf, see also Global Time ‘Trained and untamed: China’s elite Snow Leopard Commandos’ April 8, 2015. http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/915758.shtml
- 25.
Summary of Chinese PSCs’ CV personnel provided by a Chinese recruiter specialized in providing former Chinese army officers to the Chinese PSCs (Shanghai, December 2016).
- 26.
- 27.
‘The United States has entered an era of perpetual war. The U.S. military has been at war for 15 straight years with no end in sight, and President Obama will soon have the dubious distinction of being the only American president to have been at war for all eight years of a two-term presidency. The traditional logic of American wars—that the United States would mobilize, fight, win, and end its wars through overwhelming force of arms—no longer seems to apply. Today’s wars can be characterized more as conflicts in the grey zone, ambiguous battles with less-defined shapes and even less-clear outcomes. This increasingly blurred line between peace and war is posing a range of new challenges for the U.S. military, for elected officials, and for the nation as a whole.’ David W. Barno and Nora Bensahel ‘Fighting and winning in the “gray zone”’ May 19, 2015. http://warontherocks.com/2015/05/fighting-and-winning-in-the-gray-zone/
- 28.
‘The bravoes/bravi were mercenaries engaged by local lords in Italy during the sixteenth and seventeenth century, they use to display flamboyant dress and aggressive behaviours.’ Shanghai, informal discussion with senior European diplomat previously posted in Afghanistan (November 2016).
- 29.
St Petersburg Send Contractors to Syria (November 15, 2013). http://www.interpretermag.com/st-petersburg-sends-contractors-to-syria/
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Arduino, A. (2018). From Shadow to Hype. In: China's Private Army. Palgrave Pivot, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7215-4_2
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