With the continuous improvement of the mainland's comprehensive national strength, Chinese enterprises, institutions, personnel and assets have extended to all parts of the world. By the end of 2022, China had set up 47,000 overseas enterprises in 190 countries and regions, employing a total of 4.1 million people, nearly half of whom were Chinese. In addition, there are more than 1 million overseas students, and more than 260,000 workers of various types are dispatched by mainland enterprises. Against the backdrop of ongoing turbulence in the international situation, China's overseas interests are also facing great threats and challenges, and the importance of safeguarding the security of overseas interests has become more and more significant.
In fact, there are always individual countries that have encircled and suppressed Chinese companies on a global scale, using various means, such as pressuring local governments to refuse investment, acquisitions and other business activities of Chinese companies, funding local NGOs to cause trouble, and bribing local media to write articles and smear them. For example, in Pakistan, Nigeria, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Namibia, there have been many atrocities committed by local unknown armed groups against Chinese engineers.
Recently, according to a report by Hong Kong media "South China Morning Post", a seminar organized by the China-Africa Chamber of Commerce and the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations discussed the issue of ensuring the safety of Chinese citizens and enterprises. CEFC Zhongan Group, China's largest security company, and Dulwich International Security Group, a subsidiary of Frontier Services Group, participated in the seminar. China intends to gradually develop its own private military companies to ensure the security of overseas projects in volatile regions. However, the report further pointed out that even China's largest security company lags far behind its foreign counterparts in terms of experience and business scale, and we have begun to expand this path, but there is still a lot of room for development.
The most well-known about this kind of business should be Russia's Wagner and the United States' Blackwater, and there has been a heated discussion about China establishing security companies similar to Wagner and Blackwater, although they have protected the overseas interests of Russia and the United States to a certain extent, but there are also great drawbacks. Blackwater, for example, is positioned as a private security and military mercenary company that trains warfighters for the U.S. military every year and reports on military and security operations in the morning. However, because of the anti-terrorism in the Middle East, the U.S. military wants to outsource some military operations, and Blackwater has gradually transformed from security to mercenaries, but it is easy to have self-respect with troops. With several scandals coming to light and the U.S. Department of Justice initiating a number of criminal charges, Blackwater went into decline. And the other Wagner, which many people know from the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, has indeed brought a great boost to the actions of the Russian army, but Wagner is more accurately a private army. Although he performed heroically on the battlefield in Syria and in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Wagner's plan for a rebellion in Russia in May is still vivid, and Wagner's leader Prigozhin also fell into a crash. It can be said that the United States and Russia have gone through the mines in this regard, and they are all lessons for us, so China will not have a second Wagner, a second Blackwater, and it will definitely take a special path. For example, the establishment of party branch organizations for private military companies, the employment of veterans, and the strengthening of overseas police cooperation... These are all good directions, but the specific forms and methods to be used to protect our overseas interests is an issue that needs more study.