JMD on NBN: Securing the Belt and Road
ALESSANDRO ARDUINO AND XUE GONG
Risk Assessment,
Private Security and Special Insurances Along the New Wave of Chinese Outbound
Investments
PALGRAVE 2018
December 20,
2018 James M. Dorsey
Alessandro Arduino and Xue Gong’s Securing the Belt and Road: Risk Assessment, Private
Security and Special Insurances Along the New Wave of Chinese Outbound
Investments (Palgrave, 2018)
significantly contributes to an understanding not only of China’s ambitious
infrastructure and energy driven Belt and Road Initiative, but also the
increasing challenges it poses for China itself. The multiple security
issues the initiative poses, including political instability, religious and
ethnic tensions, fragile legal environments, criminality, environmental
degradation and social strains, has sparked the rise of a Chinese private
security industry with what the authors call Chinese characteristics. Populated
primarily by former People’s Liberation Army and police officers, the industry
is on a steep learning curve that makes it dependent on Western and Russian
expertise. It also has to come to grips with the fact that China’s mushrooming
overseas investment threatens to drag the People’s Republic into international
crises. Arduino and Gong and their contributors to this edited volume lay out a
compelling argument for the need to not only physically secure Chinese
personnel and assets but also develop guidelines for risk assessment, special
insurance vehicles and crisis management in a world in which state-owned
enterprises lack adequate security or an understanding for the utility of
corporate social responsibility. In doing so, their edited volume constitutes a
major addition to the understanding of China’s Belt and Road Initiative that de
facto creates a building block of an as yet undefined new world order.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School
of International Studies.
Comments
Post a Comment